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A comment on Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturing industry.

Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by jerryr on Saturday March 18, 2017 @10:47PM (#13904864)
Using Glass in a factory environment surprises me. Factories are notoriously loud, so unless Glass is really good at filtering out background noise, I'd imagine that voice commands wouldn't work very well. My experience has mostly been consumer electronics factories in Asia, but I also see the following problems that may or may not apply to domestic factories:

* Equipment with clear resale value has a tendency to "walk away". We worked hard to avoid using consumer electronics such as PCs or phones on the line. When we did need to use them, we had to establish strict policies and secure storage for when the equipment was not in use. Glass seems like it'd fall in this category.

* Even dedicated, laser-based, handheld barcode scanners could be finicky with part labels. Camera-based scanners were unusable due to poor accuracy and latency.

* Internet connectivity is poor or non-existent. WiFi coverage is usually terrible due to physical and electrical interference from factory equipment.

AR work instructions would be a dream--especially if the technology could flag errors. The environment just seems especially hostile for consumer-oriented technology such as Glass. I don't have firsthand experience with Glass, but I'm really surprised this company is reporting success with it.

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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by coredog64 on Saturday March 18, 2017 @11:37PM (#13905019)
Several years ago I was trying to solve the problem of voice recognition in a noisy environment. After brainstorming with some colleagues, we came up with the idea of using a throat mike. The only problem was that we couldn't find reasonably priced hardware that would work with commodity computers.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by jerryr on Saturday March 18, 2017 @11:43PM (#13905044)
Jawbone Bluetooth headsets actually contact your jaw to use the conducted vibrations to cancel background noise, similar to your idea. Disclosure: I worked on their first generation Bluetooth headset. I'm not certain the current generations still work this way.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by abricot on Sunday March 19, 2017 @07:53AM (#13906564)
I had that one. It was really great in noisy environments... unless there were also wind. Wind outright killed the sound.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by Karunamon on Sunday March 19, 2017 @01:45AM (#13905487)
Noiseassassin - yup, the later gen ones do as well, but as I understand it, Jawbone is basically dead at this point.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by Already__Taken on Sunday March 19, 2017 @07:02AM (#13906387)
Could get a second wind with voice recognition because the problem with comms is everyone sounds the same through that style of mic.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by hatsunearu on Sunday March 19, 2017 @12:57AM (#13905272)
What the heck? I found cheap ones on Amazon designed for the Baofeng ham radios. Surely Shenzhen has figured it out.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by M_Grey on Sunday March 19, 2017 @12:39AM (#13905208)
What really needs to happen is for someone to figure out how to decode the electrical signals generated by subvocalization, train a DNN to interpret them, and use that.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by xgen on Sunday March 19, 2017 @08:29AM (#13906694)
I don't think that is practical without invasive surgery. Afaik the best we can do with external monitoring is roughly tell whether a person is trying to move or thinking about moving. Reading thoughts doesn't seem realistic with current technology.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by M_Grey on Sunday March 19, 2017 @11:43AM (#13907751)
If you're trying to tap the brain that's true, but if you could readout the muscular contractions around the vocal chords, you could translate that instead. It's definitely easier to understand the simple output at the level of muscles, than reading "thoughts" in the brain. There are already some prosthetic limbs which used implants to read muscular contractions to control the prosthetic, but those are far too crude to interpret speech.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by pscsbs on Saturday March 18, 2017 @10:59PM (#13904899)
Google Glass has physical controls on the right side to navigate the UX.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by jerryr on Saturday March 18, 2017 @11:39PM (#13905025)
Ah, makes sense. The article's photo even seems to show the operator using those controls. The article mentioned voice commands specifically though, so I was reacting to that.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by NamTaf on Sunday March 19, 2017 @04:49AM (#13906002)
Yeh, it'd definitely want to be some form of hardened industrial version of Glass, but the base technology (unobtrusive screen in front of eye with data connectivity) would be a dream for me when I'm doing inspections on plant, for example.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by klodolph on Saturday March 18, 2017 @11:56PM (#13905087)
I know some people who are working on this stuff. No voice controls, all gesture-based. The idea is to replace service manuals.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by jerryr on Sunday March 19, 2017 @01:05AM (#13905308)
Cool. Presumably they're already doing this, but I'd really recommend observation to understand the environment in which the product will be used and then following up with user tests as they prototype. There can be some surprising or unintuitive ergonomic concerns around heavy machinery. For example, factory equipment with automated movement often requires two-handed operation. Even if it could be operated with one hand, many machines will have two buttons--one on either side of the machine--which must be pressed simultaneously. This ensures the operator's hands are out of harm's way during the automated movement. If the operator takes a hand off of a button to perform a hand-based gesture, the machine comes to a halt. Also, operators tend to develop a flow as they perform repetitive operations. If a tool breaks that flow, it will likely be rejected or abused.

It sounds like your acquaintances are targeting service technicians, not necessarily factory workers, so the above examples might not apply, but I'd imagine their targeted industry has its own ergonomic concerns.

Sorry to ramble at you. Just excited because it sounds cool.

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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by el_benhameen on Sunday March 19, 2017 @12:23AM (#13905175)
That's an interesting idea, but doesn't it add significant training overhead? The value of voice commands is that the user is already fluent in the basic language of the interface, even if the specific commands still need to be learned.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by klodolph on Sunday March 19, 2017 @07:20AM (#13906453)
I played with a demo, and no, it doesn't add significant training overhead. It's less like Minority Report and more like an iPad attached to your face.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by awqrre on Saturday March 18, 2017 @10:58PM (#13904897)
Isn't noise cancellation a solved problem when using multiple microphones?
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by jerryr on Saturday March 18, 2017 @11:36PM (#13905017)
The Amazon echo has a pretty good microphone array, and it still has a hard time picking up my commands if there's background noise. And the background noise in factories is extreme. Notice that in the article's photos, the operator is wearing earplugs with Glass.
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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by justin66 on Sunday March 19, 2017 @06:08AM (#13906204)
It should be a lot easier for a microphone that's right next to your head. Face one or more microphones away from the user, that gives you the environmental noise. Point one or more microphones at the user's mouth (or use some other method). That gives you what you need (signal much louder than the environmental noise, with the right microphone), along with some of that same noise. Apply some noise subtraction magic.

It's actually pretty different than an Echo, which needs to pick out the user's commands via complex signal processing alone.

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Re:Google Glass is getting a second life in the manufacturin... by hatsunearu on Sunday March 19, 2017 @12:57AM (#13905275)
If your raw SNR is low, then you're boned no matter what.
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