Tag: ar technology

The popular music streaming service has officially rolled out its first application for this wearable technology.

Explorers now have a brand new way to be able to listen to music over their Google Glass wearable tech, as Pandora has now rolled out its very first app that is designed specifically for use over these devices.

The Glass app gives users the ability to be able to control their stations through the use of voice command.

The Google Glass app first came to life as an internal hackathon project earlier in 2014 that was held by Pandora. The company found that the effort was so popular that it went ahead and turned it into an official application designed for the augmented reality headset. It provides users with the ability to be able to listen to music through the AR glasses in three separate ways. The first is with the ear bud that is provided in the Glass Explorer kit. The second is with the additional optional stereo ear bud gadget. And the third is with the guilt in speaker of the wearable tech, itself, which doesn’t require any additional accessories.

The Google Glass version of the app can be controlled either through the touchpad or voice command.

Pandora made a blog post to share the control methods, in which it said that “Our Glassware allows you to access your personalized radio stations from wherever you are, interacting with the service through voice command or by using the touchpad.”

Users can also either play existing stations or create new ones through the use of the new app. Among the voice commands that are available to them are those that allow them to choose or form new stations. However, the touchpad goes above and beyond that for allowing users to play, skip, or pause tracks, as well as to rate individual tracks using the thumbs up or thumbs down signs.

In order to download the app, owners of the device simply need to visit the Google Glass page, turn on Pandora, and then sign in. This is the second app that has been designed by Pandora for wearable devices. The first one was made specifically for the Pebble smartwatch, and it was rolled out earlier in 2014. That said, the company has been dropping hints to suggest that there may be more focus on wearables in the future.

A new type of wearable technology could redefine the AR experience.

Andrew Maimone, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill PhD student, has developed augmented reality (AR) glasses that would allow users to digitally interact with the real world, except Maimone’s glasses are sleek, compact, and light and are realistically wearable and less of a “gimmick” in comparison to conventional AR devices.

The new AR glasses provide a wide field of view.

Maimone commented that while it is possible to utilize a tablet or a even a smartphone to call up a virtual place and character and superimpose it on the real world via a small mobile screen, this experience is not “very compelling” because the experience does not occur through a person’s vision. The smartphone or tablet only allows the user to look at the virtual place through a small window.

On the other hand, traditional augmented reality glasses are bulky due to several components that are required to make the technology work, such as lenses, waveguides, reflectors, beam splitters, and additional optics that relay a digital image to the eye and place it at a distance where it can be focused on by the eye. Unfortunately, all of the bulk this tech creates can limit a person’s field of view.

Maimone’s device is called a Pinlight Display and he has been working on this device in collaboration with three researchers from the University of North Carolina and two from Nvidia Research. The Pinlight Display does not rely on standard optical components. Instead, it utilizes an array of “pinlights”, which are essentially bright dots.

Maimone explains that “A transparent display panel is placed between the pinlights and the eye to modulate the light and form the perceived image.” He added that “Since the light rays that hit each display pixel come from the same direction, they appear in focus without the use of lenses.”

Early prototypes of the augmented reality Pinlight Displays have demonstrated 100 degree fields of view.

Currently, the best commercial augmented reality glasses only offer a field of view of up to 40 degrees, while Maimone’s glasses have demonstrated fields of view of 100 degrees or higher. While this is no doubt impressive, the present prototype is not without its problems. It currently has image quality and low resolution issues. Maimone says that the next step is to work on improving these elements. He firmly believes, however, that with the proper engineering and research, the technology could be made into something realistic for use in everyday life.