name: inverse class: center, middle, inverse layout: true .header[.floatleft[.teal[Christopher Biggs] — Assistive AR].floatright[.teal[@unixbigot] .logo[@accelerando_au]]] .footer[.floatleft[.hashtag[lca2022] Jan 2022]] --- layout: true name: callout class: center, middle, italic, bulletul .header[.floatleft[.teal[Christopher Biggs] — Assistive AR].floatright[.teal[@unixbigot] .logo[@accelerando_au]]] .footer[.floatleft[.hashtag[lca2022] Jan 2022]] --- layout: true name: toply class: center, toply, italic, bulletul .header[.floatleft[.teal[Christopher Biggs] — Assistive AR].floatright[.teal[@unixbigot] .logo[@accelerando_au]]] .footer[.floatleft[.hashtag[lca2022] Jan 2022]] --- layout: true template: callout .header[.floatleft[.teal[Christopher Biggs] — Assistive AR].floatright[.teal[@unixbigot] .logo[@accelerando_au]]] .footer[.floatleft[.hashtag[lca2022] Jan 2022]] --- template: inverse # Useful Reality ### Assistive AR on a budget .bottom.right[ Christopher Biggs, .logo[Accelerando Lab] <br>@unixbigot .logo[@accelerando_au] ] ??? Greetings Earthlings meat and metal, and anyone receiving this out there in the wider universe. Today I want to confirm that planet earth is ripe for takeover by exploring the hilariously poor state of our cognitive technology, and confirming that the inhabatants of this planet are still in the ludicrously early stages of uplifting themselves to higher sentience. --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro ] --- # About Me ## Christopher Biggs — .teal[@unixbigot] — .logo[@accelerando_au] * Brisbane, Australia * Founder, .logo[Accelerando - Innovation Space and IoT consultants] * 20+ years in IT as developer, architect, manager ??? But before I go on, some more shameless self promotion. Another of my hats is host of the brisbane internet of things interest group. This group offers a learning enivironment to help you, to help all of us, steer toward a livable future, so if this presentation sparks your interest, you are encouraged to join us. We also do practical workshops, where you can get hands on with all manner of technologies. You can find more information on meetup.com --- # "He was always such a *nice*  young man" ## or, How did I end up like this? ??? My background is in computer science; my sideline as an evil roboticist is pretty much self taught. I've always since I was a teenager been fascinated by the possibility of bodily and cognitive enhancements. That fascination has led me to create Accelerando Innovation Space, which you see behind me. We are a technology consultancy in brisbane that also provides a coworking and maker space. The work we do with our members ranges from full service implementation to just providing a roof and some tools. If you're in Brisbane and this is interesting, we are also the monthly venue for the Brisbane Internet of Things meetup Sunday Mad Science events, which are an open lab afternoon where you can bring your problems projects and broken tech and explore solutions with your peers. --- .fig40[ ] .spacedn[ ## In this future, we're all a bit... # SQUIRREL!!! ] ??? Naturally, this environment involves a fair bit of multitasking. And multitasking is something at which I am quite well known to be one hundred percent absolutely and undenably shit-awful. Look, I've been occasionally known to go looking for a screwdriver, find the exact one I need, then spend the next hour wondering where I put down the screw that was in my hand a minute ago. Actually I'm bullshitting you, its not occasional this happens to me every frickin day. And the Current Unpleasantness here in season 3 of 2020 seems to only make it worse. Now cognitive challenges can be addressed in a number of wayss. There's psychiatric therapy and learning coping techniques, which I think of debugging for your meatware. Pharmacological treatments are quite popular, I reckon this is basically overclocking. But today I want to tell you about prosthetics. Technology for improved multitasking. My friend Monica Bradley often says that she wants an operating system for her life, and thats something I can get behind. --- # Prelude ## What we're going to talk about .fig50r[ ] .fig50l[ ] ??? So I chose to look at this sort of systematically. Not really, what I did was read a lot of science fiction and watched a heap of movies. On the left here is what comics and movies and novels dangle before us -- 3D holograms that obey our tactile and spoken commands. On the right, is the absolue cutting edge as of the 1990s. I so envied those guys back in the day. --- # Prelude * The holy grail and the holy f**k * SciFi Inspirations * Single-board-computers * Screens * Cameras (or not) * Cognitive aids * Instrumentation ??? So firstly I want to look at what parts of the sci fi future we've already got, what tech is just around the corner, and what currently imaginary tech might be in the pipeline. Then I'm going to go piece by piece through what someone on a modest budget, that is Not Tony Stark, might be able to assemble today. We'll start with a computer, which is somewhere that we're actually swamped for choice. Screens not so much, there's good and cheap and very little in the middle. Cameras have been a real surprise, there's a visceral DO NOT WANT reaction from almost everyone. And finally the bits that motivated me are coginitive aids and wearable instrumentation, that is the possibility to augment our multitasking ability, or lack of it, with tech. --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals ] --- # My personal requirements ??? Some people use the word Pre Disabled, with varying degrees of seriousness, to describe those lucky people who have no physical or cognitive challenges. Yet. The intent of that term is to highlight that assistive technology is NOT a niche market. We *all* need it sooner or later. Spectacles are mainstream. Hearing aids are more common than you'd think. Wheelchairs and mobility scooters are not uncommon, but we suck at accommodating them. So here's what *I* want from assistive technology, what the market delivers, and what I think is the next level. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials ??? When I got my first GSM mobile phone in the 1990s, I read that it had some thing known as short message service, where you could send a brief textual message to another phone. It didn't work in Australia because the telephone companies hadn't bothered to bring such an obscure and useless feature to market. Only it turned out to be a killer app. Pagers and phonebooths and voice messages went extinct pretty quickly once people worked out how much more convenient a quick word or two was. You might have forgotten that twitter started as a mobile phone service for messaging a group of your friends at once about what you were up to, and then the tail abandoned the dog and we got a whole new social paradigm. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision ??? Now these text messages are coming to our smartphone screens, or to our smartwatches, which to be honest is pretty freaking cool. A smartphone gives me probably two thirds of my assitive tech utopia, and I do think that in five years smartphones might get nearly all the way there. We all use our phones as torches, or as magnifying glasses, and as barcode scanners. This is really handy, but it's also a handicap, in that one of your hands is consumed in holding the phone. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision * Remote perception ??? I'm getting older, and I've been warned my arthritic hips and knees are going to give out on me some day, so I'm thinking about how to save on movement. I want to have my appliances and machines stop demanding my presence so much. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision * Remote perception * Audio Replay ??? If I've met you in real life, there's a good chance I forgot your name within ten seconds. Don't think its because I don't care, but meeting someone new is a heck of a cognitive load. Memorising a face, doing the right bow or elbow bump or heaven forbid a handshake, smiling, and thinking of something to say, and parsing what that person said, it's a huge CPU spike and it seems that in my case the background process that moves inportant information from short term to long term memory just glitches out for a moment. If I hear the name again, I'm good, because after that inital processing spike everything works ok. So sometimes I just need to be able to quietly rerun the last 20 seconds of audio. Subtitles would be a bonus. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision * Remote perception * Audio Replay * Data acquisition ??? Recording data is another place where our phones are both great and awful. I bet you have a photo roll full of cat pictures and shopping receipts and whiteboards. --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision * Remote perception * Audio Replay * Data acquisition * Task switching ??? --- # My personal requirements * Written communication, and access to reference materials * Enhanced vision * Remote perception * Audio Replay * Data acquisition * Task switching * Extra senses ??? --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations ] --- # Inspirations --- .fig80[  ] --- .fig100[  ] --- .fig100[  ] --- .fig80[  ] --- .fig30[  ] .fig50l[  ] --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains ] --- # End of setup --- # Brains .fig50l[ ] .fig50r[ ] --- # Memory is short * "Zero" class boards have only half a gig * RasPi 4 has 8G which is great, but its bigger * Compute modules sound great...but her HDMI --- # OS * For Pi: Raspberry Pi OS. * For Everything Else, there's Armbian ** Avoid Ubuntu (IMAO) --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens ] --- # Power .fig50l[ ] .fig50r[ ] --- # Screens .fig50r[  ] .fig50l[  ] --- # Yeah but... ## ...what have you got under $3000 --- # Screens .fig50r[  ] .fig50l[  ] --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras ] --- # Cameras ## ...or not --- .fig50r[  ] .fig50l[  ] --- .fig80[  ] --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras # Inputs ] --- # Inputs .fig50r[  ] .fig50l[  ] --- .fig60[ ] --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras # Inputs # Cognitive Aids ] --- # Cognitive aids * Virtual stack --- .fig[ ] # Cognitive aids * Virtual stack * Physical stack (remember to go back to...) --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras # Inputs # Cognitive Aids # Instrumentation ] --- # Instrumentation --- # Instrumentation .fig50l[  ] --- # Instrumentation .fig50l[  ] .fig30r[  ] --- # Instrumentation .fig30r[  ] * Held in place with ... MAGNETS --- # Instrumentation .fig30r[  ] .fig30l[  ] * Held in place with ... MAGNETS * Or maybe blueteeth --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras # Inputs # Cognitive Aids # Instrumentation # Dorks # Coda ] --- # Ludicrous prototypes --- .fig30l[  ] --- .fig30l[  ] .fig30r[  ] --- .fig50l[ ] .fig30r[  ] --- layout: true template: toply .crumb[ # Intro # Goals # Inspirations # Brains # Screens # Cameras # Inputs # Cognitive Aids # Instrumentation # Dorks # Coda ] --- .fig[ ] # Next --- class: vtight .fig25[  ] # Peroration* .footnote[Yes, that's a word. Look it up.] .nolm[ * Head mounted cameras are social poison * Finger cameras are useful * Gravity is a tools * HMD's suck (good, large, cheap, pick any two) * A computer is a Machine to help you think, whatever that means for you * Remote sensing is suddenly vital ] --- # Resources, Questions ## Related talks - [http://christopher.biggs.id.au/#talks](http://christopher.biggs.id.au/#talks) ## Me - Christopher Biggs - Twitter: .blue[@unixbigot] - Email: .blue[christopher@biggs.id.au] - Accelerando - Innovation Space and IoT Consultants - https://accelerando.com.au/