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Commuter-rail maintenance workers to test sort-of augmented-reality glasses

MIT Technology Review reports Keolis workers will soon test Android-based "smart glasses" that will let them do real-time lookups of important data or consult with colleagues remotely.

The glasses will be tested in several locations, including the large repair facility in Somerville and a smaller yard in Readville. If successful, even train drivers could one day be given pairs - to let them make emergency repairs while still on the tracks.

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Comments

I remember seeing this idea back in the early 90s when Lockheed or Boeing toyed with trying it out for their mechanics and assembly technicians.

'cept back then, it was a giant unweildy thing with a pair of small (2"-3") CRTs strapped to the headgear displaying black and white (or amber on black, for the so inclined) text graphics.

But the really cool thing is that back then there weren't small cameras and fast computers that could track your eye, so what they did is they arranged it so that different buttons or menus ('forward,' 'back,' and the like) would blink at different frequencies on the screen. An electrode hooked up to a patch on the back of the mechanic's head near the visual cortex would then pick up different frequencies in the aggregate brain waves it could measure depending on where the guy was directing his gaze.

Completely unwieldy, and slower than Stephen Hawking's user interface, but damn that was some out-of-the-box thinking, at least by today's standards, when computers are cheap, algorithms are for free on sourceforge or github, and it's all packaged up into something barely the size of a pack of gum.

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Can patrons get smart glasses that will show real-time pictures of their train (wherever it happens to be)?

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