Wireless network for VR-type application

[Jason Dowling]

Hi there,

Is there anyone who could advise me on setting up a personal wireless
network consisting of a headmounted digital camera, head mounted
display, and a PDA. I would really like to avoid cables as this
system will be used to measure user mobility.

The purpose of this system is to simulate artificial human vision
(which uses electrical stimulation in the visual cortex, optic nerve
or retina to provide a limited number of "phosphenes", or blobs of
perceived light to a blind person). This simulation is then used to
explore how we can enhance mobility using image processing. I've done
some previous work with a PDA display and headgear, but the setup was
too heavy (eg. http://wdic2005.aprs.org.au/CDROM/papers/34.pdf ). In
this simulation image data was captured using a Flycam CF card camera,
image processing performed on the PDA, and the PDA display was used
to present the "phosphenes".

I am now thinking of using 802.11b (Wi-Fi) for the wireless
communication, as I don't think Bluetooth provides enough bandwidth
for video and Infra Red is not suitable.

There are a few digital cameras which have 802.11b (eg. the
CAS-200W, http://mail.ral.ro/pdf/NCS200W.pdf ). They look too large
for head mounting, and I'm not sure about power supply.

I'm not aware of any HMDs which are 802.11b enabled. The HMD needs to
restrict light to only the display (ie. augmented displays are
usually not appropriate). I don't need a high resolution for the
glasses. Something like the i-glasses SVGA (
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/ ) would be great, if they were
wirelessly interface with the PDA.

The PDA I'm using is an iPaq 2210, which can use a compact flash
802.11b card.

My questions are:
1. Has anyone done this or are you able to suggest references?
2. Is it feasible to set up an ad-hoc personal network using Wi-Fi in
this way? Has anyone done it?
3. Can anyone suggest wireless hardware which would be appropriate for
this project?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Jason

[Peter Jones]

I don't know whether it would work on in Ad-Hoc mode. As far as power
supplies go, a few feet of copper wire and some C-cell batteries should do
the trick.

For the display, I reccomend that you just stick with a standard wired
one- its much cheaper, assuming that a wireless display
does exist.

Peter Jones
pjo...@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org