NASA And Microsoft Using HoloLens To Make It Possible To Work Remotely… On Mars

Microsoft and NASA are teaming up to make remote working on the Red Planet a reality, using the newly announced HoloLens headset, and the Windows Holographic technology that it supports. The platform is called OnSight and is being developed out of NASA’s Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It uses the Mars Curiosity rover as effectively a telepresence bot for scientists working out of the relative comforts of Earth’s atmosphere.

Data piped from Curiosity will allow the OnSight software to build a 3D simulation of its surroundings on Mars, which scientists will be able to check out first-hand thanks to HoloLens’ ability to project virtual environments onto physical surroundings. The scientists will then be able to examine what’s being worked on by Curiosity from a first-person perspective, and then plan future activities for the rover to complete, as well as see simulations of their likely results.

HoloLens and the holographic computing MS is using with the headset won’t just pipe a 3D recreation of the Martian landscape to scientists. It’ll also overlay the imagery with information, distances, readings and other sensor data and supplemental knowledge to help scientists experience Curiosity’s viewpoint in a way that lets them work within the simulation directly, rather than having to pop out to check some detail on a nearby terminal.

OnSight is part of JPL’s ongoing research into robot-controlled spacecraft and exploration equipment, meaning we could eventually see more robot missions to Mars before we send humans up there to check things out first-hand. Curiosity operations involving the OnSight tech are slated to kick off later this year, and HoloLens and Microsoft’s crazy AR innovations could be included in Mars 2020 rover missions, NASA says.

I literally just finished reading The Martian, so I can’t close without mentioning that this probably would’ve helped a lot with the rescue of Mark Watney, had HoloLens and OnSight existed in that fictional near future.

Comments

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog