Wraparound Video
The Small Business Innovations Research program is funding a project that could revolutionize the way people watch video images: the Alternate Reality Vision System (ARVIS), developed by an engineering firm in Conway, Wash. According to Bob Dyer, an electronics engineer at Concept Vision System, ARVIS is a stereoscopic image projection device that occupies the viewer's entire field of vision. Conceived by company president John Webster, a registered-nurse- turned-inventor who incorporated the firm last fall, the system projects images on two concave fiberoptic surfaces placed 3 centimeters from each eye and offers a view 120 degrees up and down and 240 degrees across, which is what people normally see. Working on a $429,000 Small Business Innovations Research contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Webster and Dyer hope to have their Phase II prototype ready by this fall.
DARPA hopes pilots will someday use the ARVIS technology and ...
