Google Glass Team: ‘Wearable Computing Will Be the Norm’

By Steven Levy

Even though I followed Google’s I/O Conference from across the country, the event made it obvious that a company created with a strict focus on search has become an omnivorous factory of tech products both hard and soft. Google now regards its developers conference as a launch pad for a shotgun spread of announcements, almost like a CES springing from a single company. (Whatever happened to “more wood behind fewer arrows”?)

But the Google product that threatened to steal the entire show probably won’t be sold to the public until 2014. This is the prosthetic eye-based display computer called Project Glass, which is coming out of the company’s experimental unit, Google[x]. Announced last April, it was dropped into the conference in dramatic fashion: An extravagant demo hosted by Google co-founder Sergey Brin involved skydivers, stunt cyclists, and a death-defying Google+ hangout. It quickly attained legendary status.

Even before people got to sample Glass, it was popping their eyes out.

Google wouldn’t provide a date or product details for Glass’ eventual appearance as a consumer product — and in fact made it clear that the team was still figuring out the key details of what that product would be. But Google made waves by announcing that it would take orders for a $1,500 “explorer’s version,” sold only to I/O attendees and shipped sometime early next year. Hungry to get their hands on what seemed to be groundbreaking new technology, developers lined up to put their money down.

Meanwhile, I just as hungrily bit at the opportunity to do a phone interview with two of the leaders of Glass. Google originally hired project head Babak Parviz from the University of Washington, where he was the McMorrow Innovation Associate Professor, specializing in the interface between biology and technology. (One relevant piece of work: a paper called “Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens.”)
The other Glass honcho, product manager Steve Lee, is a longtime Google product manager, specializing in location and mapping areas. Here is the edited conversation.

Wired: Where are you now with Glass as compared to what Google will eventually release?
Babak Parviz: Project Glass is something that Steve and I have worked on together for a bit more than two years now. It has gone through lots of prototypes and fortunately we’ve arrived at something that sort of works right now. It still is a prototype, but we can do more experimentation with it. We’re excited about this. This could be a radically new technology that really enables people to do things that otherwise they couldn’t do. There are two broad areas that we’re looking at. One is to enable people to communicate with images in new ways, and in a better way. The second is very rapid access to information.

Wired: Let’s talk about some of the product basics. For instance, I’m still not clear whether Glass is something that works with the phone in your pocket, or a stand-alone product.

Parviz: Right now it doesn’t have a cell radio, it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If you’re outdoors or on the go, at least for the immediate future, if you would like to have data connection, you would need a phone.

Steve Lee: Eventually it’ll be a stand-alone product in its own right.

Wired: What are the other current basics?

Parviz: We have a pretty powerful processor and a lot of memory in the device. There’s quite a bit of storage on board, so you can store images and video on board, or you can just live stream it out. We have a see-through display, so it shows images and video if you like, and it’s all self-contained. It has a camera that can collect photographs or video. It has a touchpad so it can interact with the system, and it has gyroscope, accelerometers, and compasses for making the system aware in terms of location and direction. It has microphones for collecting sound, it has a small speaker for getting sound back to the person who’s wearing it, and it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And GPS.

This is the configuration that most likely will ship to the developers, but it’s not 100 percent sure that this is the configuration that will we ship to the broader consumer market.
Wired: How much does it weigh?

Lee: It’s comparable to a pair of sunglasses. You can stack three of these up and balance a scale with a smart phone.

Wired: What was your thinking when you embarked on the project, and how did that thinking evolve?

Parviz: We did look at many, many different possibilities early on. One of the things that we looked at was very immersive AR [Augmented Reality] environments — how much that would allow people to do, how much could come between you and the physical world, and how much that can be distractive. Over time we really found that particular picture less and less compelling. As we used the device ourselves, what became more compelling to use was a type of technology that doesn’t come between you and the physical world. So you do what you normally do but when you want to access it, it’s immediately relevant — it can help you do something, it would help you connect to other people with images or video, or it would help you get a snippet of information very quickly. So we decided that having the technology out of the way is much, much more compelling than immersive AR, at least at this time.

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Iran threatens Israel; new EU sanctions take force

By Yeganeh Torbati

(Reuters) - Iran announced missile tests on Sunday and threatened to wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if the Jewish state attacked it, brandishing some of its starkest threats on the day Europe began enforcing an oil embargo and harsh new sanctions.

The European sanctions - including a ban on imports of Iranian oil by EU states and measures that make it difficult for other countries to trade with Iran - were enacted earlier this year but mainly came into effect on July 1.

They are designed to break Iran's economy and force it to curb nuclear work that Western countries say is aimed at producing an atomic weapon. Reporting by Reuters has shown in recent months that the sanctions have already had a significant effect on Iran's economy.

Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear aims. The United States also says military force is on the table as a last resort, but U.S. officials have repeatedly encouraged the Israelis to be patient while new sanctions take effect.

Washington said the EU's oil ban might force Tehran to give ground at the next round of nuclear talks, scheduled for this week in Istanbul.

Announcing three days of missile tests in the coming week, Revolutionary Guards General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said the exercises should be seen as a message "that the Islamic Republic of Iran is resolute in standing up to ... bullying, and will respond to any possible evil decisively and strongly."

Any attack on Iran by Israel would be answered resolutely: "If they take any action, they will hand us an excuse to wipe them off the face of the earth," said Hajizadeh, head of the Guards' airborne division, according to state news agency IRNA.

The missile tests will target mock-ups of air bases in the region, Hajizadeh said, adding that its ability to strike U.S. bases in the Gulf protects Iran from U.S. support for Israel.

"U.S. bases in the region are within range of our missiles and weapons, and therefore they certainly will not cooperate with the regime (Israel)," he told IRNA.

Iran has repeatedly unnerved oil markets by threatening reprisals if it were to be attacked or its trade disrupted.

The threat against the Jewish state echoed words President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke in 2005, saying Israel "must be wiped off the page of time" - a phrase often translated as "wiped off the map" and cited by Israel to show how allowing Iran to get nuclear arms would be a threat to its existence.

The EU ban on Iranian oil imports directly deprives Iran of a market that bought 18 percent of its exports a year ago. The sanctions also bar EU companies from transporting Iranian crude or insuring shipments, hurting its trade worldwide.

"They signal our clear determination to intensify the peaceful diplomatic pressure," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

The EU sanctions come alongside stringent new measures imposed by Washington this year on third countries doing business with Iran. The United States welcomed the EU sanctions as an "essential part" of diplomatic efforts "to seek a peaceful resolution that addresses the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said he hoped the sanctions would force Tehran to make concessions in technical-level talks with six world powers later this week.

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"Iran has an opportunity to pursue substantive negotiations, beginning with expert level talks this week in Istanbul, and must take concrete steps toward a comprehensive resolution of the international community's concerns with Iran's nuclear activities," Carney said in a statement.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - foes of Iran which face it across the oil-rich Gulf - announced their own joint air force exercises on Sunday which they said would take "several days," their state news agencies reported.

In three rounds of talks between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, the Western powers have demanded Tehran halt high-grade uranium enrichment, ship out all high-grade uranium and close a key enrichment facility.

The talks lost steam at the last meeting in Moscow last month and there was not enough common ground for negotiators to agree whether to meet again. Officials - but not political decision-makers - meet in Turkey on Tuesday.

Washington sees the sanctions and talks as a potential way out of the standoff to avert the need for military action, but has not said it would block Israel from attacking Iran.

Tehran says it has a right to peaceful nuclear technologies and is not seeking the bomb. It accuses nuclear-armed states of hypocrisy. Officials said they were taking steps to reduce the economic impact of the new sanctions.

"We are implementing programs to counter sanctions and we will confront these malicious policies," Mehr news agency quoted Iranian central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani as saying.

Bahmani has struggled to prevent a plunge in the value of the rial currency and steadily rising inflation as the sanctions have taken effect. He said the effects of the sanctions were tough but that Iran had built up $150 billion in foreign reserves to protect its economy.

Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said oil importing countries would be the losers if the sanctions lead to price rises.

"All possible options have been planned in government to counter sanctions," Qasemi said on the ministry's website.

Last Friday, another Revolutionary Guards commander, Ali Fadavi, said Iran would equip its ships in the Strait of Hormuz - the neck of the Gulf and a vital oil transit point - with shorter-range missiles.

EU oil embargo on Iran takes effect. Gulf braced for backlash, Hormuz closure

DEBKAfile Special Report
 
The European oil embargo taking effect Sunday, July 1 blocks the sale to European Union members of 1 million, or one third, of Iran’s daily output of 3.3 million barrels a day. EU insurance firms, the biggest in the world, henceforth withhold cover from governments and firms operating tankers which carry Iranian oil. 

This sanction was threatened in January if diplomatic negotiations in the interim failed to persuade Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, to halt work on developing a nuclear weapon.

Three rounds of talks by six world powers (US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) with Iran have since ended in impasse. A fourth at a technical level is scheduled for Tuesday, July 3, in Istanbul.

Braced against potential reprisals from Tehran, Saud Arabia and fellow Gulf nations have placed their armies on alert. Completing a deployment begun last Thursday for possible intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia has massed units on its borders with Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait. The United Arab Emirates sea, air and special forces are on a state of readiness, as are US Fifth Fleet vessels in Gulf waters.

While not anticipating full-scale war, they are acutely apprehensive of possible Iranian strikes against Gulf oil fields, export terminals, pipelines or tankers either by covert Al Qods Brigades squads or local Shiite saboteurs.

Tehran has repeatedly threatened to treat an oil embargo as an act of war and close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to Gulf shipping in response.

Two days before the oil embargo went into effect, Saudi Arabia and the UAE activated two extra oil pipelines bypassing Hormuz and providing alternative routes for their oil to continue to flow to export markets if the Straits are blocked.

The Saudis repaired and enlarged the disused “Iraq Pipeline in Saudi Arabia” –IPS, a 25-year old pipe running 750 kilometers from eastern Saudi oil fields to the Yanbu refineries and export terminal complex on the Red Sea. Riyadh is keeping its volume a trade secret. However international oil experts estimate its capacity at around one-fifth of the Saudi production of around 9.5 million bpd.

The UAE’s 380-kilometer long Habshan-Fujairah pipeline is brand new. Operating from June, it is able to carry 1.5 million bpd of this group’s total 2.5 million bpd output out to the Gulf of Oman port of Fujairah.

American and French forces went on standby at this port since Saturday. Tehran could attack both of these pipelines as one form of reprisal for the tough, new sanction.

Friday, June 29, a senior Revolutionary Guards Corp general announced that missiles with a range of 300 kilometers were to be installed on Iranian warships on duty in the vicinity of the Hormuz Straits.

debkafile’s military sources are looking at next Tuesday, when nuclear talks are due to resume at a technical level, as a critical moment for a possible Iranian response to the oil embargo.  Tehran may make its attendance at the Istanbul meeting conditional on the lifting of the oil embargo. This would effectively wind down the international effort to reach a nuclear accommodation with Iran by diplomacy and open the door to other options.

Iranian lawmakers Saturday dismissed the EU oil embargo as “very little and insignificant” and declared that economic sanctions and Western pressure would have “no effect on Iran’s determination on its path toward development and progress.” The Iranian Majlis’ Economic commission will announce its “scientific and pragmatic policies in the coming days.”

Brrzzzt! U.S. Army checks out laser-based lightning tech

Future weapon would seek out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.

by Charles Cooper

Earlier this spring, the U.S. Army revealed the existence of a project underway to build a device that could shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to take out a target. Now the military's boffins report success in their first tests.

The technology -- known as laser-induced plasma channel -- is designed to seek out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.

Although scientists and engineers working on the weapon's development expressed confidence in the physics behind their work, George Fischer, who is the lead scientist on the project, nonetheless cautioned about the technical challenges still ahead.

"If the light focuses in air, there is certainly the danger that it will focus in a glass lens, or in other parts of the laser amplifier system, destroying it," according to Fischer. "We needed to lower the intensity in the optical amplifier and keep it low until we wanted the light to self-focus in air.

Laser weaponry is moving apace. In early May, for example, Northrop Grumman demonstrated a prototype system that burned through the skin of a drone playing the part of a cruise missile for the test. However, Fischer pointed to the challenges involved in synchronizing the laser with the high voltage, as well as how to build a device that's sufficiently rugged so as to stand up under extreme environmental conditions. The system would also need to be able to perform in the field over extended periods of time, he said, adding that a number of high-tech components would need to run continuously.

It remains unclear how soon the military can weaponize this sort of technology. A representative from the Picatinny Arsenal, headquarters for the project, was not available for comment.

However, there's clear interest in getting this done as the battlefield bottom line in having a weapon which can harness lightning bolts is huge in terms of the amount of energy generated.

"If a laser puts out a pulse with modest energy, but the time is incredibly tiny, the power can be huge," according to Fischer. "During the duration of the laser pulse, it can be putting out more power than a large city needs, but the pulse only lasts for two-trillionths of a second."

Wedding DJs beware - dancing music robot picks songs, shimmies to the beat and even reacts to the mood of the crowd

By Rob Waugh

The news should send a shiver down the spines of wedding DJs - a new robot disc jockey is set to take to the stage at Google's I/O conference in San Francisco today.

Shimi picks tunes, dances in time to the music and even reacts to the 'mood' of the crowd to keep the dancefloor pumping.

Unlike many human DJs, he also does requests

If a user taps of claps a beat,v Shimi analyzes it, scans the phone's musical library and immediately plays the song that best matches the suggestion. Once the music starts, Shimi dances to the rhythm.

The robot's 'eyes' can also follow people round a room and ensure that speakers are aimed at them.

Shimi, a musical companion developed by Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, recommends songs, dances to the beat and keeps the music pumping based on listener feedback.

The smartphone-enabled, one-foot-tall robot is billed as an interactive ‘musical buddy.’

‘Shimi is designed to change the way that people enjoy and think about their music,’ said Professor Gil Weinberg, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology and the robot's creator.

The robot was shown off at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco.

A band of three Shimi robots strutted their stuff for guests, dancing in sync to music created in the lab and composed according to its movements.

Shimi is essentially a docking station with a ‘brain’ powered by an Android phone. Once docked, the robot gains the sensing and musical generation capabilities of the user's mobile device. In other words, if there's an ‘app for that,’ Shimi is ready.

For instance, by using the phone's camera and face-detecting software, the bot can follow a listener around the room and position its ‘ears,’ or speakers, for optimal sound.

Another recognition feature is based on rhythm and tempo. If the user taps or claps a beat,

‘Many people think that robots are limited by their programming instructions,’ said Music Technology Ph.D. candidate Mason Bretan. ‘Shimi shows us that robots can be creative and interactive.’

Future apps in the works will allow the user to shake their head in disagreement or wave a hand in the air to alert Shimi to skip to the next song or increase/decrease the volume. The robot will also have the capability to recommend new music based on the user's song choices and provide feedback on the music play list.

Weinberg hopes other developers will be inspired to create more apps to expand Shimi's creative and interactive capabilities, allowing the machine to leave the lab and head into the real world.

‘I believe that our center is ahead of a revolution that will see more robots in homes, bypassing some of the fears some people have about machines doing everyday functions in their lives,’ Weinberg said.

Weinberg is in the process of commercializing Shimi through an exclusive licensing agreement with Georgia Tech. A new start-up company, Tovbot, has been formed and Weinberg hopes to make the robot available to consumers by the 2013 holiday season. Shimi was developed in collaboration with the Media Innovation Lab at IDC Herzliya and led by

Professor Guy Hoffmann. Entrepreneur Ian Campbell and robot designer Roberto Aimi were also part of the Shimi team.

This is the third robotic musician created by the Center for Music Technology. Haile is a percussionist that can listen to live players, analyze their music in real-time and improvise with music of its own. Shimon is an interactive marimba player.

‘If robots are going to arrive in homes, we think that they will be these kind of machines - small, entertaining and fun,’ Weinberg said. ‘They will enhance your life and pave the way for more sophisticated service robots in our lives.’

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