An analysis of building a Portable Holographic AI assistant (PHA) are initiated by LikMing Poon by this Article. In this article, we will discussed about the background of the technology development , the benefits of PHA development and the difficulties faced by building PHA device.
Index terms：PHA, Information technology, 3D projector, Holographic Technology, Biosensor, AI assistant, Wearable devices
Background
As regarded to the development of the human history, the trend of increasing the effectiveness of information transmission have never ceased. Since 1440, Gutenberg(1395-1468) have developed the movable printing press. As a result, the information transmission beyond human have greatly increased, where information could be spread by printed paper, result in the popular of books. In 1822, the first computer is built by Charles Babbage(1791-1871),then the internet is first introduced by Vint Cerf in 1943 and was well-developed by the collaborative work by the expertise.
In sum, the technology of the information transformation is keep improving, from the printed work to the 2D video in the internet, both the quality and efficiency of transferring information have been improved. Thus, developing 3D information technology will be the future, and portable Holographic AI assistant(PHA) will be one of the potential candidate of the practical use of the 3D information technology.
Benefits of PHA
There are a lot of benefits from PHA towards human, it can increase the effectiveness of communication and improving the living standards of humanity.
First, the effectiveness of communication is believed to increase with the PHA technology, regarding to the Albert Mehrabian‘s research, 55/38/7 formula was proposed such 55% of human communication is non-verbal, 38% is vocal and 7% is on the word. In the contemporary methods of communication, social media platforms may take the main role neglecting face to face communication. However, those information in the social media platform are often blurred from initial, since social media users are hard to observe the non-verbal language of each other, and text messages are often used with a lot of short forms and memes which may further confused others, as different people will have different understanding on it according to their own experiences. On the contrary, PHA can collect and deliver more specific information then the previous, such as body language, state and condition. Those will make a great process in the communication between humans, more precise information can be delivered from man to man, as 55% non-verbal language can project by PHA clearly, which can avoid a lot of misunderstandings.
Second, the PHA device can improve human’s living standard. Provided PHA can generate instant 3D images for the user by the holographic technology, interacting with the user’s movement by biosensors, assisting chores and tasks for the user by the AI technology, easy to wear on the clothes by the wearable technology, launching a 3D holographic call with the data processing technology. PHA users can enjoy more precise and enriched information, which can help them to capture different messages accurately and enhance the entertainment experience. With biosensor technology, the user can use their body to command interaction of the holographic image, moving different dashboard and windows freely, this can improve the user’s working productivity by the better control system. Furthermore, the biosensors can detected the body data such as heart rate and breath rate, in order to give health advice to the users, regulating their conditions back to the optimal. Moreover, PHA can helps users to solve a lot of daily problems as well as the existing AI assistant did. Nevertheless, PHA can offer Holographic call where the user are able to see the holographic images of each other when they are both using PHA device, this can enable them to capture the non-verbal language of each other more precisely to avoid misunderstandings as mentioned above. On top of that, PHA device are convenient in use, it can be stick on the clothes in front of the chest or shoulder, so that the holographic images can be clearly projected.
Difficulties of developing PHA device
Although there are a lot of benefits of PHA devices.However, there are some obstacles of the development of the portable Holographic AI assistant, those difficulties such as (i)AI model (ii)information processing system (iii)Holographic Technology (iv)Wearable technology (v)Biosensor technology.
AI model
To develop the PHA device, develop a suitable AI model is necessary, so as to tackle user daily problem and having interactions. One of the important functions of the AI assistant is voice control system, which requires a myriad of training data for the model. Currently a lot of training data are not opened to the public, they are often excludable to the company, the accessibility to data could be one of the AI model difficulty.
Information processing system
Holographic images processing can be challenging, since it requires are large numbers of data, and those data are much more complicated than the traditional 2D images. Developing an algorithm for processing precise image searched from databases or received by transmission could be the most important challenge to deal with, since it will greatly affected the user experience no matter how great other functions are. Moreover, the holographic call functions requires a strong CPU to process instant images. As the data of instant holographic images could be large, the CPU might be heated up quickly, which may make the user feel uncomfortable. To deal with that, cloud computing will be a good method, yet the CPU is running in a cloud data center instead of in the device. But this “perfect” solution will brings out two more challenges : the accessibility of large cloud data center which can support a large number of users and the database-device transmission problem.
Holographic Technology
Holographic Technology is the core function of PHA, which project instant 3D images in the air. This could be done by stimulating emission of air molecules in the air by a femtosecond laser, provided that when the signal photons have hit the air molecules, the electrons of air molecules will have gained energy by photons which push them form the ground state to the excited state, and after about 100nano seconds the electrons will fall from the excited state to the ground state if no energy gained. During the fall of electrons, it will release the same energy of photons pushing it to the excited state, which can generate a spot of light in the mid of air instantly. In fact, the frequency of photons launch by the laser could be too high that out of the visible spectrum. This may be solve by sending out a destructive photons towards the signal photons, adjusting the frequency of the released phonons to typical visible spectrum frequency, which can generate different colour of light. Imagine each of the light spot is one pixel, when summing up a large numbers of light spot, 3D image could be generated. The difficulties of developing the holographic technology is the accessibility of the high frequency laser and experimental ground.
Wearable technology
Wearable technology is the essential technology to make PHA device common, since those lasers in PHA may use up a lot of space, it could be inconvenient for the user to move around. The aim of the wearable technology is to turn PHA become portable, minimising the size of it and design the best allocation for all components. However, size minimisation will also brings out another problem, which is the battery life. Both finding suitable substitute of battery and seeking the methods of battery life prolongation could be very challenging. In conclusion, the biggest challenge of wearable technology in PHA is to minimising the size of the device without affecting the user’s experience.
Biosensor technology
There are two main applications part of the biosensor technology in PHA, collecting body health information and detecting the command sent to PHA by the body movement. For collecting simple body health information, it could be done by adopting the non-invasive human vital signs monitoring based-on twin-core optical fibre sensors. But for collecting further more body data, it might need to use invasive sensor which could uncomfortable the user. For the detection of body command, it could be done by applying thermal infrared sensor, and having optimisation of processing by deep learning. However, since there are noise in the surroundings, the sensor might be affected and lead to misjudgment. Adjusting the optimal sensitivity and increase the precision of the sensing result is the most challenging part.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is possible to develop PHA device even though it face a lot of difficulties currently. PHA will likely be the future of mankind by observing the trend of increasing in technology, since it can benefit human a lot by increasing the communication effectiveness and improve the living standard.
I am currently a research fellow in Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Electronic and Information Engineering.If you are doing related research, it is welcome to inform me at Rimondpoon@gmail.com.
