 I'm here at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies in LA. Since it was founded in 1999, ICT has been where people go to research how we might teach, learn, move, and talk in the future. It's where you go to see how things that seemed like science fiction 10 or 20 years ago could become a basic part of human communication. This is one of the centerpieces of ICT, the Wide 5, a professional-grade VR headset that's nearly 10 years old. The red lights on those horns talk to a tracking system that covers the room, and you can put them on anything. Gloves, shoes, even a drone. So first time I've ever moved my feet in VR, I think, like seen my avatar's feet in VR. Yeah, so it's a big deal, right? If you're tracking hands and tracking feet and tracking torso, it completely transforms the experience. You can see the path that you walked. This is an experiment in redirected walking. I feel like I've been exploring a whole compound, but some clever visual tricks mean I'm really just going in circles. The goal is to implement this in various training regimens. So the Army has a system called dismounted soldier training system, where they take a squad of men and women and they put them in head mount displays, and then they run them through a virtual scenario. It turns out that it's much more effective if you start to involve the body as well as the mind in an immersive scenario. So the lab has gotten pretty good at this, and we can fool you into thinking that a small track space is a bigger space. The next steps that the lab is working on is what happens if I now have two people in the space? Because now I have to keep them from running into each other. So imagine being able to play Madden and move around and do Madden without getting in each other's way. What we're really focused on is how can humans use this for training and learning opportunities? We know that robots and drones and all of these autonomous and semi-autonomous objects are going to be part of the landscape. The whole sort of steampunk ethos of I'm going to put my Wi-Fi up on a drone and I'm going to put my sensor systems up on a drone, and I'm just going to have portable sensors wherever I want is going to come true. Once you put those sensors up, they can do something like tell a drone in a disaster area exactly where to go, no matter how much it gets knocked around. So the computer is telling it to stay in this spot. See, now it's upset because I'm basically giving it more lift to push it up and then it realizes that it wants to go back down. ICT gets funding from the U.S. military, and one of the things it's produced is Project Blue Shark, a prototype for the future of ships. It's an augmented reality command center made from an Oculus Rift and a bunch of displays, which could show pictures and controls or be totally blank. The images could be projected onto them with a headset. It's supposed to make you feel like you're right up in the crow's nest, even if you're really in a dark room miles away. The actual design would have to be a lot more sophisticated than this, but that's up to the Navy and to future VR designers. The reality is it's going to change the way that you design the ship. It's going to change the way that you design the ship's complement, the number of people, the type of tasks that they do, the structure of the Navy itself. It all changes because you can now start to immerse people in these environments. Once you hit robot arm, so this is an example of connecting a physical world object with the virtual. Since we're tracking your hands, you can use gestures to control the arm. These prototypes are never going to go up for sale to the general public, but the effects could trickle down. The whole sensor market, so wearable sensors, you know, Apple Watch is kind of a bad first generation, but Apple will evolve it and get it better over time to do a limited set of things. But body sensing is going to be huge. All of that stuff is going to start to crash together. And we'll probably wonder how we got along without it as long as it doesn't end up becoming Skynet killing us. Even if it's not Skynet, does making military technology raise ethical questions? Making technology has the ability to be used for positive outcomes and it can be used for negative outcomes. I mean, is it, is it ethical to scan one of our employees and then make him dance Gangnam style? ICT was working on VR years before the Oculus Rift hype, but there's still a lot of work left. One of the biggest obstacles is haptics, which companies like Disney have been working on and that ICT is interested in too. If you want to immerse someone, you need to immerse all of the senses. And right now we're very far along the way on the visual and we're very behind on all of the other senses. So I think that's, those are areas that are really ripe, but they're really, really difficult problems. If you look around ICT's lab, you can see the past and future of technology, whether that's drones or light field video or body scanning or a predecessor to Google cardboard. It's tied into everything that we talk about when we talk about virtual reality, augmented reality and telepresence. And if I came back in a year, I'd probably see even more.
 I'm here at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies in LA.
 Since it was founded in 1999, ICT has been where people go to research how we might teach,
 learn, move, and talk in the future.
 It's where you go to see how things that seemed like science fiction 10 or 20 years ago could
 become a basic part of human communication.
 This is one of the centerpieces of ICT, the Wide 5, a professional-grade VR headset that's
 nearly 10 years old.
 The red lights on those horns talk to a tracking system that covers the room, and you can put
 them on anything.
 Gloves, shoes, even a drone.
 So first time I've ever moved my feet in VR, I think, like seen my avatar's feet in VR.
 Yeah, so it's a big deal, right?
 If you're tracking hands and tracking feet and tracking torso, it completely transforms
 the experience.
 You can see the path that you walked.
 This is an experiment in redirected walking.
 I feel like I've been exploring a whole compound, but some clever visual tricks mean I'm really
 just going in circles.
 The goal is to implement this in various training regimens.
 So the Army has a system called dismounted soldier training system, where they take a
 squad of men and women and they put them in head mount displays, and then they run them
 through a virtual scenario.
 It turns out that it's much more effective if you start to involve the body as well as
 the mind in an immersive scenario.
 So the lab has gotten pretty good at this, and we can fool you into thinking that a small
 track space is a bigger space.
 The next steps that the lab is working on is what happens if I now have two people in
 the space?
 Because now I have to keep them from running into each other.
 So imagine being able to play Madden and move around and do Madden without getting in each
 other's way.
 What we're really focused on is how can humans use this for training and learning opportunities?
 We know that robots and drones and all of these autonomous and semi-autonomous objects
 are going to be part of the landscape.
 The whole sort of steampunk ethos of I'm going to put my Wi-Fi up on a drone and I'm going
 to put my sensor systems up on a drone, and I'm just going to have portable sensors wherever
 I want is going to come true.
 Once you put those sensors up, they can do something like tell a drone in a disaster
 area exactly where to go, no matter how much it gets knocked around.
 So the computer is telling it to stay in this spot.
 See, now it's upset because I'm basically giving it more lift to push it up and then
 it realizes that it wants to go back down.
 ICT gets funding from the U.S. military, and one of the things it's produced is Project
 Blue Shark, a prototype for the future of ships.
 It's an augmented reality command center made from an Oculus Rift and a bunch of displays,
 which could show pictures and controls or be totally blank.
 The images could be projected onto them with a headset.
 It's supposed to make you feel like you're right up in the crow's nest, even if you're
 really in a dark room miles away.
 The actual design would have to be a lot more sophisticated than this, but that's up to
 the Navy and to future VR designers.
 The reality is it's going to change the way that you design the ship.
 It's going to change the way that you design the ship's complement, the number of people,
 the type of tasks that they do, the structure of the Navy itself.
 It all changes because you can now start to immerse people in these environments.
 Once you hit robot arm, so this is an example of connecting a physical world object with
 the virtual.
 Since we're tracking your hands, you can use gestures to control the arm.
 These prototypes are never going to go up for sale to the general public, but the effects
 could trickle down.
 The whole sensor market, so wearable sensors, you know, Apple Watch is kind of a bad first
 generation, but Apple will evolve it and get it better over time to do a limited set of
 things.
 But body sensing is going to be huge.
 All of that stuff is going to start to crash together.
 And we'll probably wonder how we got along without it as long as it doesn't end up becoming
 Skynet killing us.
 Even if it's not Skynet, does making military technology raise ethical questions?
 Making technology has the ability to be used for positive outcomes and it can be used for
 negative outcomes.
 I mean, is it, is it ethical to scan one of our employees and then make him dance Gangnam
 style?
 ICT was working on VR years before the Oculus Rift hype, but there's still a lot of work
 left.
 One of the biggest obstacles is haptics, which companies like Disney have been working on
 and that ICT is interested in too.
 If you want to immerse someone, you need to immerse all of the senses.
 And right now we're very far along the way on the visual and we're very behind on all
 of the other senses.
 So I think that's, those are areas that are really ripe, but they're really, really difficult
 problems.
 If you look around ICT's lab, you can see the past and future of technology, whether
 that's drones or light field video or body scanning or a predecessor to Google cardboard.
 It's tied into everything that we talk about when we talk about virtual reality, augmented
 reality and telepresence.
 And if I came back in a year, I'd probably see even more.