Heads-Up Sports

"Heads-up" displays are particularly interesting Inescapable Data devices that are starting to be used in some sports and could also be driven, by wider adoption, into our business and personal lives. Heads-up displays have been used for decades to train the pilots of commercial airliners as well as space shuttleborne astronauts. However, the heads-up display technologies used in these applications are expensive, require a lot of power, and are physically heavy, and thus nonsuitable as sports gear. To be suitable for sporting applications, they must be small in form, lightweight, run off battery power, and be wireless-enabled.

Heads-up displays have typically used a head-mounted visor to display some amount of data or an image that is superimposed on the view seen by the wearer of the device. This data is typically presented in text form, or as small-scale diagrams, and is projected in a way that does not require the viewer's eyes to constantly refocus as they move continuously back and forth between the view ahead and the text or image projected onto the visor. So, instead of moving your head around to see dials, charts, screens, etc., you simply shift your eyes.

Think of what you experience when you drive your car. You often have to move your head in order to focus your sight on the radio, for example, taking your eyes off the road. It can take up to two seconds for your eyes to refocus and re-interpret the new view. In sporting events where a tenth of a second can separate winners from losers, such time is an unavailable luxury and quite dangerous.

Peter Purdy, a former competition skier (among other sports) and currently CTO of Motion Research, developed the first patented, athlete-mounted Doppler speed-detection systemheads-up display goggles. "We developed technology that was sufficiently small and lightweight, and could be operated off of a small battery that fits entirely within the skiers racing goggles." However, unlike heads-up displays that use a visor to reflect an image back to the eye, Purdy's technology projects small amounts of an image onto the retina of one eye, at a perceived distance of 13 feet ahead, while the view as seen by the other eye remains completely unobstructed. A skier, competing in a downhill slalom event, for example, can see elapsed time and speed while continuing to focus on the course ahead.

"By allowing one eye to take in the display image and the other to see the real-world image, the brain superimposes the display image automatically over the real world," explains Purdy. "The issue with any heads-up technology is that you have to balance the value of cluttering and confusing the user's overall scene view. In the fast world of racing, there can be no distractions. The beauty of heads-up technology is that your brain can process simple images such as short text or speed graphs without any compromise."

Purdy goes on to explain that the technology required to produce "in-glasses" style of heads-up displays is quite advanced in terms of development, although its most practical and productive uses presently remain out of the reach of most consumers. Nevertheless, Purdy developed heads-up goggles for the engineers of a large aircraft manufacturer who wear them as they walk through an airplane shell as it is being assembled. As engineers glance around the inside of the shell, they see the full wiring schematics superimposed on the surface of the shell. The view is dynamically adjusted based on view angle and position within the shell.

Such devices require a display/projection resolution closer to that of a real computer and hence have high cost and higher power consumption. Motion Research is currently focused on developing consumer-level data-projection eyewear for use in high-speed sporting events that require a continual focus on the view ahead.

SportVue

Motion Research's SportVue is a $150 to $300 consumer-grade, heads-up display system targeted at the average bicyclist or motorcycle rider. Unlike goggles, the SportVue uses a tiny one-inch-wide display that attaches to the edge of any helmet near the top of the user's field of view. The display is wirelessly connected to a data collection device elsewhere on the bike or motorcycle that monitors speed, gear number, and body metrics such as heart rate. (Bicyclists attempt to attain a particular cardio-saturation level and maintain that level throughout a trip.) Although the amount of information displayed is purposely modest, the point is to augment visual reality with a careful amount of pertinent information without compromising safety or enjoyment of the experience.

In the world of sports, heads-up displays will be used initially in events where helmets are normally worn. One can imagine, however, the utility of such a device to a broader range of sports events and even in our daily lives. As we become inundated with information from PDAs, wearable computers, and cell phones, we will need to find ways to more easily and more rapidly assimilate the information and make it useful.

Although currently available consumer-grade heads-up displays do not offer a fantasy-like full-immersion virtual viewing experience, they are a significant step forward toward our Inescapable Data vision where multiple data sources are converged and made readily available to us in real time. Going forward, we will see eyewear that is both innocuous and unobtrusive, that can enhance our life experiences by adding data, text, and graphics without so much as a turn of the head, and that is within the economical reach of most consumers.