Ameet's blog

Just read about apple's research on autostereoscopic displays , which lets us see a 3D image, without needing to squint :) I have been thinking about a pet idea for a long time, which is half baked, and will probably remain so.. Hence I though it might be good idea to spell it out here, so that interested people can work on it/ evaluate it. (and if blog post has any legal validity as a prior art, at least people can't patent it :) I have heard enough brickbats about it from friends, but still it charms me to envision its implementation. Here it goes :( 1. Head tracking pointing : Human computer interface has been trying to replace mouse with gaze for a long time. Usual problems associated with such are distraction and confusion, as cursor follows gaze, and gaze follows moving cursor, which follows gaze and so on. Even gaze tracking is not that accurate yet/ cheap enough to be practical. My solution is head tracking. Head is easier to track approximately, as features/ silhouttes...

My hero :P I just love this guy! One more video . His quotes .. -I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. -No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. -Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. -If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. -What do you care what other people think! (not exactly quote, but a pact between him and his wife)

A week back, I met a friend, who while reminiscing college days, said with dismay, "all is right now, but the innocence is lost." With this, I started thinking about innocence. What is it? Wikipedia articulates it so well. Innocence is a state of unknowing, where one's experience is lesser, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting a blissfully positive view of the world, in particular one where the lack of knowledge stems from a lack of wrongdoing, whereas greater knowledge comes from doing wrong. This is so intriguing! We treasure innocence, not knowing. We yearn to keep inner child alive, reminder of times when we knew nothing, were cared for, were more full of love & joy, were not so judgmental. We censor our movies, we give spoiler alert before divulging a plot. This affinity of innocence, runs counter to t...

The manhole near my lab :-) Inner cover from Mexico, outer cover from India, and outermost ring, from China :)

Well what can I say! They said they would do it, and they did it!! Hats off to them! Ratan Tata, Tata group, Engineers and designers. Here is a very good interview of Ratan Tata by Charlie Rose. Is this the beginning of manufacturing led growth in India? Now if only government steps up with infrastructure projects, India can go the China way.

HCI is Human Computer Interaction, and Johnny Lee from CMU, is making it damn cheaper and fun! And he is making all the code, tools available for hobbyists freely on the web! Now, you can turn any laptop, computer, wall projection into a touchscreen. Or you can wave your fingers at it like in Matrix, click, zoom and pan. Why limit to fixed, flat surfaces? You can take a blank paper, a tablet, an umbrella or mini clay model of a car and turn it into a movable projected display, giving it virtual skin, zoom, pan, doodle on it, move it, tilt it, twirl it! He also has figured a way to use wiimote to turn the flat, drab 2D screen into a 3D display using head tracking, offering custom views for each perspective. Now ducking and strafe from oncoming bullets in Doom, can be much more real life! And all this without the expensive price tag. All above projects are doable with access to off the shelf hardware like computer, projector, wiimote or Umbrella :-) he has also made a 14$ steadycam , whi...