h/t to Popular Science here. The application for these micro display devices is almost limitless. I just saw this article and my head is swimming with potential, for civilian and military applications. It looks like there are many companies pursuing the technologies, here is one: 3M Product here
- Roughly the size of a wireless earpiece and less than half an inch thick, the 3M mobile projection engine delivers brilliant VGA resolution images and is available today. (Photo: Business Wire)
- Above is Microvision’s product. Here’s what they say on their site:
Our Mission
- We are focused, agile, and boundaryless in our pursuit of innovative display and imaging solutions that dramatically improve how our customers solve real problems.
Our Vision
- To become an indispensable source for illuminating information, profitable with sustainable double-digit growth.
Folks, that kind of language above would never be written by a program manager in the US government, especially if a contracting official became involved. If the US Government would have contracted to do what private innovation and industry have done, these things would be the size of microwaves, weigh 25 pounds, and take up a lot of energy. Now here’s an idea for the military, give a bunch of these to some smart special operators, let em use em, wear em, break em, and then buy a BUNCH of these! If it breaks, buy some more!
Now, think about this scenario: You are a team leader driving down the road and a UAV spots some bad guys three streets over. You dismount and start moving to contact. You stop, pull out your pocket device, point it a wall, gather your squad leaders around, look at the vision on the wall, it’s downlink feed from a Predator overhead. You give your quick brief, then move out.
Remember the scene in “Band of Brothers” where Lt. Winters pulls a poncho over his head, checks out the map with a mini-compass, and figures out where he thinks he is? We are a year away from the team leader projecting real time info on a wall. It’s a new game folks. Please, PLEASE, would someone in the DOD, go find 2 or 3 of these companies, buy a couple dozen each of these, give it to some GI's, let them deploy with them, figure out what they really need, THEN publish an RFP. Sigh.....
For those of you out there on the pointy end, be safe, be strong, kick a.s.s.