Month: June 2016

The DAVID helmet: basically Microsoft HoloLens for the underwater set. (credit: US Navy)

Augmented reality displays have been used by the military for decades. Their usage has traditionally been confined mostly to aircraft, first in the form of "heads up" displays in the cockpit and more recently (as with the F-35) integrated directly into helmets, giving pilots the ability to essentially look through the aircraft and see the skies around them and ground below them. But now, augmented reality is going underwater. Engineers at the US Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) are developing a diver's helmet with a built-in "heads up" display that can guide divers to where they need to be, locate the objects they're looking for, and even "see" in near-zero visibility.

The Divers Augmented Vision Display (DAVID) helmet can display high-resolution sonar imagery overlaid on the environment around the diver, as well as other data transmitted from a boat above. The project, led by Underwater Systems Development Project Engineer Dennis Gallagher (no relation to this author) is preparing for its first underwater tests in October.

DAVID is similar in its approach to the sorts of augmented reality displays being explored in the industrial world—in fields like aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, for example, where augmented reality headsets can show workers precisely where to put a rivet, or locate a system problem based on diagnostic data. DAVID's display can be turned on and off by the diver and repositioned within the mask by the support team on the surface at the diver's request, and it can display a huge variety of helpful visuals: text messages from above, diagrams and photos of objects the diver is looking for or working with, even floating virtual instructions on how to operate or fix equipment in the diver's field of vision.

(credit: Samsung Tomorrow)

A recent study from market research group Phoenix Marketing International has found that although more people have reported using Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay have adoption rates on par with where Apple Pay was several months into its launch. This suggests the two competing mobile payment technologies aren't far behind Apple in capturing market share.

Phoenix surveyed 3,004 credit card holders and concluded that an estimated 23 percent of the market had linked a credit card, debit card, or pre-paid card to either Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, or some combination thereof. (The survey reported its results as weighted percentages, however, as the company said it over-sampled millennials and affluent credit card holders. In raw data, 779 respondents, or 26 percent, had linked a card to one of the three mobile payment apps. All other percentages in this report are weighted.) Of those who had linked a card to a Pay app, up to 93 percent made at least one mobile payment purchase in a store, and about 81 percent have made at least one in-app purchase.

The survey also found that roughly 18 percent of card holders had signed up for Apple Pay, 11 percent for Android Pay, and 12 percent for Samsung Pay.