IEEE Future Directions
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In September 2013 I wrote a post on Crowdoptic, a start up that exploited Google Glass to broadcast live events through the "eyes" of many viewers.
Now I stumbled onto another news related to Crowdoptic announcing that the start up has created a new application that can let one person, wearing Google Glass, look at what another person, also wearing Google Glass is see in, like seeing through somebody’s else’s eyes!
The application has been designed in cooperation with the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University Medical Center having in mind having in mind the training of residents.
When performing a surgery the operating field is so small (you don’t really want to open up a patient any more than what is absolutely necessary) that only the surgeon operating sees what she is doing. This makes training difficult. By wearing Google Glass both the resident and the experienced surgeon the experienced one by looking at the resident operating can see the operating field exactly as the resident is seeing it and therefore can comment and give guidance.
The interesting feature is that you only need to look at someone else and automatically what is seen by that person GGlass is routed to your GGlass. Alternatively, by looking at a specific point you can ask to see that same point as if you were wearing the GGlass of another person looking at that point. The ensemble of these two features is what makes this application unique. It is not just like routing a video stream from one GGlass to yours, it is doing so automatically depending on where "you" look!
I have to say I would never have thought about this kind of application! And I bet many of you wouldn’t have either. This just shows how a technology can find application in many fields, most of them unexpected.
It also tells us that even a specific technology may become an enabling tools for a variety of fields, that in turns will be stimulating further ideas of applications in a positive spiral. This ought to be true for several of the activities being carried out at EIT ICT Labs, where by being immersed in a broad multidisciplinary European market they can hit the intended target and then spread thorough-out the ecosystem possibly creating more value than the original target is actually doing.
