Eyetap

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C. Aimone with a one-eyed injection-molded EyeTap

The EyeTap is a name for a device that is worn in front of the eye that

• Acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye, and
• Acts as a display to superimpose a computer-generated imagery on the original scene available to the eye.

In order to capture what the eye is seeing as accurately as possible an EyeTap uses a beam splitter to send the same scene (with reduced intensity) to both the eye and a camera. The camera then digitizes the reflected image of the scene and sends it to a computer. The computer processes the image and then sends it to a projector. The projector sends the image to the other side of the beam splitter so that this computer-generated image is reflected into the eye to be superimposed on the original scene. Stereo EyeTaps modify light passing through both eyes, but many research prototypes (mainly for reasons of ease of construction) only tap one eye. EyeTap^[1] is also the name of an organization founded by inventor Steve Mann to develop and promote EyeTap-related technologies such as wearable computing.

[edit] Possible uses

Inventor Steve Mann using weather-resistant EyeTap together with a hydraulophone

An EyeTap is somewhat like a head-up display. The important difference is that the scene available to the eye is also available, now, to the computer that projects the Head-up Display. This enables the EyeTap to modify the computer generated scene in response to the natural scene. One use, for instance, would be a Sports EyeTap: here the wearer while in a stadium would be able to follow a particular player in a field and have the EyeTap display statistics relevant to that player as a floating box above the player. The EyeTap Criteria are an attempt to define how close a real, practical device comes to such an ideal. EyeTaps will have great use in any field where the user would benefit from real-time interactive information that is largely visual in nature. This is sometimes referred to as "computer-mediated reality", commonly known as "augmented reality".

[edit] References