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Augmented reality and self-driving automobiles.  Two great topics that really get Michael and Michael’s engines revving!  Staring off with the Mashable articles, one of which inspired the episode name with it’s similar name, the pair talk about ways for holographic projection can be used for augmented reality without glasses.  The first example is the Hydrogen phone by the high end video camera manufacturer Red, which projects the holographic image up from the phone.  A second example from the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University is an augmented reality projector that fits into a lightbulb socket and projects down from the ceiling onto a desktop, and sensors connected to the projector allow the user to manipulate the user interface, dock user interfaces onto real objects like computers and books, resize them and much more.  The video above shows what they have accomplished — pretty amazing.  The namesake for this episode deals with more of the glasses-driven approach for how the next generation of augmented reality could replace the iPhone, and while this is plausible, the article does point out that the referenced patent indicates a reliance on a computer (read as a phone) that the glasses connect to.

The automotive section of this episode deals with self driving vehicles, such a the Dutch startup Amber — whose business model focuses on mobility as a service, where transportation is ready for you when you need it to be because of the predictive analytic models and the self driving vehicles optimizing traffic patterns to have a vehicle near you when you need it.  Continuing on the machine learning of fleets of self driving vehicles, the pair discuss an NPR article that focuses Alphabet’s Waymo used a fleet of Googlers driving around on their bicycles to create a model to predict how unpredictable bicyclists behave and better avoid accidents.

Things are about to get amazing.

Selected links 

Mashable article:  The world’s first glasses-free holographic phone is coming, and it’s not from Apple —   http://mashable.com/2017/07/06/red-hydrogen-holographic-phone

Red Hydrogen Phone — http://www.red.com/hydrogen

BGR article: This augmented reality projector just needs a lightbulb socket — http://bgr.com/2017/07/12/augmented-reality-projector/

BGR article: This is how Apple might ‘kill’ the iPhone — http://bgr.com/2017/07/27/iphone-ar-glasses-apple/

Venture Beat article: Amber: The Dutch self-driving startup that could beat Uber, Tesla, and Google to mass market — https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/09/amber-the-dutch-self-driving-startup-that-could-beat-uber-tesla-and-google-to-mass-market/

Amber — https://www.ambermobility.com

Mashable article: BMW and other carmakers team up to take on Waze and Google Maps —  http://mashable.com/2017/07/26/here-connected-car-real-time-traffic-service

NPR article: Bikes May Have To Talk To Self-Driving Cars For Safety’s Sake — http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/07/24/537746346/bikes-may-have-to-talk-to-self-driving-cars-for-safetys-sake

Way — https://waymo.com

What are the co-hosts playing these days?

Michael R — Futurama game — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/futurama-worlds-of-tomorrow/id1207472130?mt=8

Michael M — Neko Atsume — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_Atsume

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:09 — 39.3MB) | Embed

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