SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook-backed researchers have managed to translate brain signals into spoken words, bringing the social network's vision of linking brains and machines closer to reality.
A study published this week by University of California-San Francisco scientists showed progress toward a new type of brain-computer interface. The project involved brain implants, but could be a step toward accomplishing the goal with a non-invasive method such as augmented reality glasses with sensors.
"A decade from now, the ability to type directly from our brains may be accepted as a given," Facebook said Tuesday in an online post updating a project announced two years ago.
"Not long ago, it sounded like science fiction. Now, it feels within plausible reach."
Such a breakthrough could benefit people with paralysis, spinal cord injuries, neurodegenerative diseases or other conditions making them unable to speak, and may also let people control technology such as augmented reality glasses just by thinking, Facebook said.
"It's never too early to start thinking through the important questions that will need to be answered before such a potentially powerful technology should make its way into commercial products," Facebook said.
A study published in Nature Communications detailed how researchers were able to capture brain signals being sent to produce speech and figure out what people were trying to say.
A standard set of questions were asked of the volunteers in the study, with the computer provided context to help figure out answers.
"Currently, patients with speech loss due to paralysis are limited to spelling words out very slowly using residual eye movements or muscle twitches to control a computer interface," said UCSF neuroscientist Eddie Chang.
"But in many cases, information needed to produce fluent speech is still there in their brains. We just need the technology to allow them to express it."
AUGMENTED MINDS
The study was funded by Facebook Reality Labs, a research unit at the California-based internet titan focused on technology for augmented and virtual reality experiences.
The work is part of "Project Steno" exploring the feasibility of a wearable device that lets people type by imagining themselves talking.
"Our progress shows real potential in how future inputs and interactions with AR glasses could one day look," Facebook vice president of augmented and virtual reality Andrew Bosworth tweeted.
Researchers hope to eventually decode 100 words per minute in real time with a 1,000-word vocabulary and an error rate below 17 percent, according to Facebook.
Futurist entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed this month his secretive dis startup is making progress on an interface linking brains with computers, and said testing on people may begin next year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA -- Apple could begin production of its long rumored augmented reality glasses as early as the fourth quarter of this year, according to reports on Monday.
The glasses will work as an accessory to the iPhone, acting as a display, while the handset takes care of computing functions, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was quoted in several reports.
The Apple analyst has a track record for accurately predicting Apple products, including the redesign, swipe-based gestures and $1,000 price tag of the iPhone X in 2017.
Bloomberg reported in late 2016 that Apple was considering expanding into wearable glass headsets and has talked about the project with potential suppliers.
Apple will mass produce the AR glasses as early as the fourth quarter but it could be pushed back to the second quarter of 2020, according to Kuo.
Cupertino-based Apple, under pressure to innovate away from its core iPhone business, has baked AR into its software. Shoppers can use AR on Apple devices to simulate how IKEA furniture will look in their living spaces or find their way to boarding gates for American Airlines flights.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LOS ANGELES - Fantastic beasts, wizard adventures and magic spells will come to life in a new "Harry Potter" augmented reality mobile game from Pokemon Go developer Niantic Inc and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment, the companies said on Wednesday.
"Harry Potter: Wizards Unite" will bring author J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World to mobile phones and use augmented reality (AR) to create a real-world scavenger hunt, allow players to cast spells, find artifacts, team up and encounter magical beasts and characters from the popular book series.
The game's use of real locations is similar to Niantic and Nintendo Co Ltd's Pokemon Go, which became the first mass market adoption of AR in July 2016 and allows players to "catch" animated characters that appeared in their real surroundings.
No release date was given for the "Harry Potter" game, but Niantic and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros said more details would be available next year.
Warner Bros Pictures, which produced the $7.7 billion-grossing "Harry Potter" film franchise, will release "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2" in November 2018, the second installment in a new series of films that expand the world Rowling created in her Potter franchise.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SAN FRANCISCO, California - As Apple and Samsung gear up to launch new flagship smartphones, the market leaders are seeking a wow factor that can help them fend off challenges from rising Chinese-based manufacturers.
Apple is under particular pressure to dazzle as the culture-changing California iPhone maker looks for a way to maintain its image as an innovation leader in a global market showing signs of slowing.
"Clearly, Apple wants to do something different for the 10th anniversary" of the iPhone, NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker told AFP.
Baker said this is a challenge for Apple because "it is still going to be a flat piece of glass and the other things we talk about around a phone."
Apple is widely expected to unveil the latest iteration of the iPhone in September, while smartphone market leader Samsung is holding an August 23 unveiling likely to launch its Galaxy Note 8 handset.
The two market leaders are seeing rivals, mainly from China, chip away at market share, creating pressure to showcase innovation, say analysts.
Some reports say the new iPhone will include a high-quality, edge-to-edge screen with a notch in the top for an extra camera supporting 3D facial recognition.
Some speculate that the back of the new handset will be glass and will offer wireless charging.
"We are expecting a major design refresh on Apple," GlobalData analyst Avi Greengart told AFP.
"That has been a sore point, especially in China. People are looking to show off a status symbol, so it needs to look different than Huawei or Xiaomi, and I think it will."
Apple has lost ground in the Chinese market, with revenues down 10 percent in the past quarter from a year earlier in its "Greater China" segment.
Some reports say Apple could release as many as three new handsets, including an "iPhone Pro" aimed at capturing the high end of the market.
SHIFTING MARKET
Global smartphone sales saw a modest decline of 0.8 percent in the second quarter of 2017, as market leaders Samsung and Apple consolidated their positions, an IDC survey showed.
The South Korean giant maintained the top spot with a 23.3 percent market share, while Apple held onto second place with 12 percent, according to IDC.
Huawei was the third-largest vendor, with an 11.3 percent market share. The Chinese electronics giant closed the gap with Apple, adding two percentage points to market share from a year earlier, according to the survey.
China-based Oppo and Xiaomi rounded out the top five.
Samsung is in stride with a recently released Galaxy 8 flagship phone, seemingly recovered from an embarrassing recall of a Note 7 model due to batteries catching fire.
"Samsung had the Note 7 debacle, but it appears their troubles are behind them," Greengart said.
"Samsung is doing some amazing things with its display and design."
NPD's Baker said he expected "the drum beat of Hero Android phones" that could challenge the iPhone "to be a little louder this year that it has been."
Meanwhile, the Google-made Pixel smartphones that debuted last year will likely get a second generation in the months ahead.
New Pixels are expected to have richer screens and an additional front speaker, and to follow the trend of adding a second camera on the back for depth-sensing.
Gartner analyst Brian Blau suggested that, aside from Apple trying to wow with an anniversary iPhone, flagship handsets launched this year would have incremental improvements, not radical transformations.
"There will be a small number of new players, and that always brings excitement," Blau said.
New entries include the "Essential" smartphone from a startup founded by Andy Rubin, credited with being the father of Android software.
Essential, whose backers include internet colossus Amazon and China's Tencent Holdings, began selling its $699 handset this month, touting the handset's ceramic and titanium construction and the ability to add accessories on a magnetic connector.
AUGMENTING REALITY
Some analysts say the upcoming handsets may showcase the ability to handle augmented reality (AR) as a way to revive interest.
Google has pushed augmented reality with a "Tango" phone, and enabled Pixel handsets to be used for virtual reality with "Daydream" gear. And Apple has made an AR kit available to developers that could lead to iPhone apps.
"The standard AR demos we have seen for years as a future thing -- seeing how new furniture looks in your living room or virtual coupons hanging in mid-air in supermarket aisles -- we will see this fall," Greengart predicted.
Smartphone makers are also expected to do more with voice recognition and commands, making handsets more attractive in places where literacy rates are low but mobile internet access is available.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook on Tuesday launched a mission to make smartphone cameras windows to augmented reality, focusing on what people have in hand instead of waiting for high-tech eyewear.
While kicking off the leading social network's annual developers conference in the heart of Silicon Valley, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called smartphone cameras an initial and promising platform for augmented-reality features in applications tailored to sync with the social network.
"I am confident now we are going to push this augmented-reality platform forward," Zuckerberg said, predicting the technology would eventually be incorporated into eyeglasses.
"We are going to make the camera the first mainstream augmented-reality platform."
He noted an array of things that could easily fill their roles virtually, such as game boards or television screens, with users being able to easily play or view without need for physical versions.
An upbeat Zuckerberg, who fired off jokes, also showed how digital plants, animals, masks and more could be added to real scenes viewed through smartphone cameras in the same manner that games such as Pokemon Go let people catch animated creatures in the world around them.
"Augmented reality will help us mix the digital and the physical in new ways," Zuckerberg said during a keynote presentation.
"We are all about extending the physical world online."
Previously, Facebook had been focused strongly on virtual reality as the next big computing platform, particularly using Rift headgear made by its Oculus unit.
Augmented reality tools unveiled by Facebook were impressive, but unlikely to reach the hands of users soon, according to Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson.
"Facebook has been slow to get into augmented reality and related technologies, focusing instead on the more mature but less mainstream virtual reality," Dawson said in a blog post.
"This year's keynote shows Facebook is serious about catching up in this area and competing with Snapchat and others."
VIRTUAL MINGLING
Vanishing message application Snapchat more than a year ago began letting users add digital decorations to real-world photos with a "Lenses" feature.
Since the feature launched, "we've become puppies, puked rainbows, face-swapped with our best friends — and begun to explore how Lenses can change the world around us," parent company Snap said in a blog post.
On Tuesday, Snapchat added the ability to "paint the world around you in 3-D" with taps of smartphone camera screens. Facebook has a habit of cloning successful Snapchat features in its applications.
Facebook also used the developers conference to introduce a test version of a virtual-reality (VR) application that lets people in different locations socialize in virtual worlds using Oculus Rift headgear.
Facebook Spaces lets Rift users "hang out" with friends in virtual worlds as if they were in the same room in the real world, according to a demonstration by Rachel Franklin, who heads the social VR team at the California-based firm.
"We have only just scratched the surface of social virtual reality technology," she said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
