Show&Tell: VR/AR
Show&Tell is Tech Square's quarterly science fair-style demo day which focuses on a different emerging technology each time. Researchers, startups, students, and corporate innovation teams showcase their experiments on the main floor of The Garage. In the middle of it all, three experts take the stage to give a five-minute Fast Forward talk about how a featured technology will impact our lives three to five years from now.
The first-ever Show&Tell focused on VR/AR. The Fast Forward talks opened with Dr. Maribeth Gandy, who conducts research at Georgia Tech on augmented reality, mobile computing, and human-computer interaction. She's the director of Georgia Tech's Interactive Media Technology Center, the director of its Wearable Technology Center, and associate director of media for the Insitute for People and Technology (IPaT).
"I don't make predictions because we're always wrong," said Dr. Gandy. Instead, she offers a call to action. "Yes, VR and AR are finally here, but they're not really here yet ... there are so many cool things we still need to solve."
Listen to Dr. Gandy's talk and follow along with her SlideShare presentation below.
The second presenter was Raj Aluri, the Lead Innovation Architect at Honeywell. "My prediction is that in five years, content will be automatically created based on your surroundings," said Raj. Hear him break down the differences in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and talk about innovation beyond the visual component - how do we engage every sense? With music, how do you help someone feel the song?
Ian Nott was the final presenter of the day. Nott is co-founder and CTO of aetho, an ATDC startup revolutionizing the way people create content. Ian's big question is, will humanity control the powers of VR/AR and use them for good, or will we be left with something akin to 1984? "How do we take the lessons we've learned from mobile and web and project that into this new medium?" he asks.
Tech Square is home to some of the brightest minds in technology conducting research and building products on the cutting-edge of emerging innovation, sometimes behind closed doors. Sandbox ATL will swing those doors wide open again on April 12 at the next Show&Tell with a focus on smart cities and internet of things. Visit techsquareatl.com to learn more and register.
Show&Tell is a Sandbox ATL production with support from Honeywell.