The Stanford student building AR to revolutionize sports - The Stanford Daily

Nearly a decennary aft packing his bags and moving to Mexico to effort retired for a nonrecreational shot team, Kevin Ubilla M.S. ’26 is gathering a gadget that helium thinks mightiness revolutionize the sports tract — and beyond.

Called Elis XR, Ubilla’s instrumentality combines a headset with a heads-up, augmented world (AR) display. With the question of a hand, a monocle-sized surface pops out, extends and slides neatly successful beforehand of a user’s tract of view.

In its existent iteration, Elis XR’s show surface tin reflector thing displayed connected a user’s phone. But the last mentation of the headset, according to Ubilla, volition enactment an open-source, decentralized platform. This means developers volition beryllium capable to physique and merchantability apps specially designed for the headset.

Since deferring his Stanford enrollment to make Elis XR, Ubilla has begun talks with respective Bay Area sports teams to follow the instrumentality arsenic portion of assorted aviator programs.

The device’s scope of apps volition let athletes to fulfill assorted needs connected the go, from Zoom meetings with coaches to reviewing regular workouts, Ubilla said. The headset volition besides travel preinstalled with a fittingness tracking app that allows athletes to entree accusation astir their health.

At archetypal glance, the headset is reminiscent of antecedently failed “smart glasses,” including Google Glass, the once-hyped product that famously fell retired of favour aft assorted bugs and privateness concerns. Ubilla says that due to the fact that Ellis XR is being catered toward jock needs, the headset fills a circumstantial niche successful the AR marketplace that Google Glass ne'er filled.

“Google Glass failed due to the fact that it tried to entreaty to everybody,” Ubilla said. “It ne'er solved a azygous usage case. It ne'er addressed a azygous existent occupation that radical had.”

But the different occupation associated with Google Glass that Elis XR hopes to address, according to Ubilla, is its inconvenience. According to Elizabeth Childs, a second-year mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, existent AR headsets are not lone exorbitantly priced, but besides conscionable excessively ample — a large obstacle fixed the advantages of a headset-style plan implicit different AR mediums.

“If it weren’t for the outgo and signifier factor, I’d decidedly usage one,” Childs said. “It’s a overmuch much realistic acquisition than looking done a screen. You tin conscionable person things close successful your imaginativeness arsenic needed.”

Ubilla says Elis XR’s accent connected convenience separates it from different headsets, with its hand-wave controlled, retractable show surface that remains some unobtrusive and flexible for regular use.

“Part of the crushed wherefore Google Glass didn’t enactment was due to the fact that radical didn’t privation this happening 24/7 connected their faces,” Ubilla said. “With this headset, the surface tin whip out, past get retired of the mode aft you bash what you request to do.”

The thought for Elis XR is partially rooted successful an unsuccessful diversion career. After Ubilla failed to marque the archetypal squad for Mexican shot squad Fuerzas Basicas arsenic a teenager, helium pivoted toward academia. At UC Berkeley, Ubilla attempted to power from shot to football, but struggled to memorize his team’s playbook and again recovered himself incapable to person playing time, which motivated him arsenic helium began brainstorming Elis XR.

But athletics is conscionable the archetypal measurement for Ubilla, who has a grander imaginativeness for his project. Ubilla envisions Elis XR arsenic thing that tin beryllium adopted by much than nonrecreational athletes, which helium sees arsenic an archetypal foothold to participate a marketplace of mostly unsuccessful products.

One manufacture connected the radar for Ubilla is gaming: a abstraction wherever adjacent the slightest of advantages tin mean the quality betwixt triumph and defeat. Ubilla said 1 root of vexation for competitory gamers is the information that galore first-person shooter games necessitate toggling betwixt menus, which often means taking eyes disconnected of the main play screen. Elis XR addresses that shortcoming with its show screen, which Ubilla hopes tin separately big these menus to the side.

But determination are a assortment of different contexts successful which AR headsets similar Elis XR mightiness find use, according to Childs, who studies the applications of AR successful education. Childs envisions utilizing AR headsets arsenic a mode to realistically simulate chemistry labs successful schools with constricted backing oregon resources.

“The thought is that you’re combining integer and existent experiences,” Childs said. “For instance, with a chemistry lab, you tin usage liquids similar h2o oregon lipid to simulate the carnal creation and past person an overlay of the ocular changes.”

Jeremy Bailenson, a communications prof and founding manager of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, wrote successful an email to The Daily that AR besides has worth successful telepresence: the preservation of the “spatial layout of a conversation.”

Bailenson, who teaches COMM 166: Virtual People, a people taught chiefly successful virtual reality, pointed toward AR’s quality to sphere “spatial cues similar oculus regard and interpersonal distance” successful a mode that mimics real-world interaction.

Ubilla’s eventual extremity is for Elis XR to wholly regenerate the smartphone altogether. By hosting its ain decentralized apps, the headset looks to connection its ain AR alternate to mobile computing, Ubilla said, something that helium calls the “next measurement forward” successful the field.

“I privation to instrumentality radical from a heads-down show to a heads-up display,” Ubilla said. “Instead of looking down astatine our phones, we tin look up astatine an immersive acquisition — 1 that’s integrated into our mundane lives.”