Wireless wearables for virtual and augmented reality

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have been explored by researchers for nearly a half century. Over the past few years, however, VR has experienced a renaissance, as head-worn display developer kits have metamorphosed into early consumer products, all far superior to what most VR researchers previously had available. Meanwhile, AR head-worn display developer kits are being released, even as Pokémon Go has caused public awareness of hand-held AR to skyrocket.

What role will wireless computing play in the future of wearable VR and AR systems? I will suggest some of the ways in which future wearable hardware, software, and user interfaces could benefit from wireless technology, and describe some of the performance constraints that wireless systems must meet for this to be possible. For example, in the quest to develop lightweight eyewear, it will be advantageous to move as much technology as possible off the head, to other parts of the body or to the nearby environment. This will demand reliably low latency and high throughput for the asymmetric round trip from head-worn sensors, to off-head processors, back to head-worn displays. Furthermore, when AR eyewear becomes commonplace, so will multi-user AR collaboration, and that means handling intricate interactions between users, both co-located and remote.