Video: Learn to use chopsticks by mimicking ghostly hands
COPYING an expert is a great way to learn. But with an augmented reality system named Ghostman, the only person you need to look at while learning is yourself.
To use the system, a student and teacher both wear pairs of glasses containing cameras that can track the wearers鈥� movements while they carry out a task. The teacher鈥檚 feed is sent to the student鈥檚 glasses, so learners can see skilled movements laid over their own in a ghostly real-time image.
鈥淓ssentially, you become the person and show them from inside, from their own viewpoint,鈥� says , at the University of Tasmania in Australia, who led the research.
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鈥淓ssentially, you become the person and show them from inside, from their own viewpoint鈥�
Using Ghostman, Chinthammit and his colleagues taught six people . People who trained with the glasses made as much progress as a group who learned the old-fashioned way. In a simple task, the two groups moved equally quickly and made about the same number of mistakes.
Despite the limited result, Chinthammit and colleagues think Ghostman could one day be useful for people in remote areas who need physiotherapy.
The system is an 鈥渆xciting first step in quantifying the promise of augmented reality鈥�, says at the University of Southern California鈥檚 Institute for Creative Technologies. The work is due to be published in BioMed Research International.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淕hostly glasses let you learn through a teacher鈥檚 eyes鈥�
