There are two competing “ultimate awesome” scenarios for wearable technology. One is obvious. Star Trek’s Holodeck. Oculus Rift and other VR technologies are helping us get there, slowly but surely(A little too slowly for my liking but I’ve always been impatient.) The other is to create some kind of superhuman akin to Iron Man or Batman on his really, really good days. Google Glass is squarely in that camp, as is any AR technology. The world’s military organizations are also in that camp, using all of their financial might to create items that augment soldiers in the field. This newest advancement may be the Starkiest Stark yet(Tony, not Ned.)
The U.S. Army has funded BAE Systems to create a new AR-enabled headset called, fittingly, Q-Warrior. This headset enables, uh, Q-uality warriors to rage against both the dying of the light and the machine with renewed accuracy. Wait, didn’t the machine refer to the military industrial complex? Eh, who knows anymore. In any event, this see-through display can actually be mounted on pre-existing helmets, making set up a breeze. All kinds of useful data is instantly overlaid over the user’s vision, including personnel tracking, hostile enemy detection and waypoint information. So yeah. It pretty much turns them into Iron Man, except for all of that flying and blasting stuff with arm cannons stuff.
Even better? The creators say the device is both lightweight and low cost, meaning that one day soon even us lowly consumers may be able to experience this technology for ourselves. Until that day comes, uh, we can always just wear the Iron Man halloween costume we have in storage and pretend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWsWOFcXHU4&list=UUs9HTncy2FLGgj00WY2k2JQ
