If you’re into gadgets, take a look at Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demoing their prototype of a wearable computer. Basically, it uses a camera to take in information about the object you’re looking at and then projects a touch screen on it.

Wearable computers have been a buzzword for a while, but haven’t quite become a reality for the public. An iPhone can do most of the tasks in the “Sixth Sense” video like look someone up online, take a picture or make a phone call, but the difference between a wearable computer and a smartphone is that the former doesn’t require you to stop what you’re doing. The idea is for it to be a sort of computerized prosthetic.

So, is this what the future of wearable computers looks like? Predicting the future is a tricky business. Some things seem laughably improbably until the moment they become commenplace. This is a proof of concept, so it being clunky or goofy-looking aren’t as important as the shift in focus it represents from a personal HUD to a public projector.

As the comments on the TED page point out, there may be times when you don’t necessarily want your computer screen projected on the nearest wall. Many wearable computer concepts use glasses for their heads-up display, something the researchers are certainly aware of, but they make the case for the projector well.

(And of course, as a video game dork, it’s hard not to get a little excited when Mistry says “…we can do all the kinds of gaming that exists now, but not only that, we can use the physical world inside the game. You can play with physical stuff, invent some new games. Maybe you can hide something in the physical world — open a book and hide something in the pages.”)

I’m amazed at how far computer vision and recognition has come in the few years since I was writing about the research my university was doing as an undergrad. Getting a device to realize “Oh, this is a plane ticket” from a sea of visual information is a remarkable achievement by itself.

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