The keynote on the second day of Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, was more technical and sci-fi than the first day, talking about brain-computer interfaces, AR glasses, artificial intelligence and global networking, with a five – to 10-year horizon. But what these themes have in common is social, It fits in with Facebook’s mission To give people the power To share and make the world more open and connected. Developing the social infrastructure for community). We believe That Facebook’s strategic vision and sense of mission have helped it build and cement its long-term competitiveness. In the near term, the company continues to be bullish on the stock, with solid revenue growth and manageable expenses thanks to Facebook AD format innovation and accelerated monetization of Instagram.
Brain-computer Interface: voiceless speech UI
Building8, a hardware team formed in secret a year ago, debuts today, and its head Regina Dugan (who previously worked at DARPA, MOTOROLA, and Google) summarizes Building8’s mission as creating new, socially first consumer electronics products. Dugan announced two projects that use brain waves and touch to communicate information, calling them Silent Speech Interfaces, which combine the convenience of a voice UI like Amazon’s Echo with the privacy of a text message.
The first project aims to decode electrical signals from the brain to produce speech at 100 words per second, five times faster than typing on a mobile phone. If successful, it could both help disabled patients and serve as a new input for AR devices. Unlike other research projects, Building 8 chose to use optical imaging to noninvastively analyze activity in the Brain’s Bunoca region, which processes language. It has been achieved in clinical trials at a rate of eight words per minute for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). To increase output, more sophisticated sensors are needed to detect brain activity at the speed of light. Of course, to address privacy concerns, Dugan goes out of his way to say that the technology only interprets activity in the language areas of the brain, not eavesdrop on all thoughts.
The second project mimics braille, sensing and conveying information through nerve touch on the skin. In experiments, Building 8’s engineers strapped transmitters to their wrists to identify the meanings of companions, such as blue spheres and white squares, by sensing different frequencies on their arms. If the project is successful, it will not only benefit the disabled, but also enable people of different mother tongues to communicate without barriers.
Similar to DARPA’s management structure, Building 8 projects are two-year in duration and each project has its own director, who has two years to prove the feasibility of the project. Currently, the BCI project has 60 engineers working on it.
As we pointed out in last year’s report, “Computing and Life Sciences: AI, cloud, Nanoscale, BRAIN-computer Interface, Brain-like chip, DNA Storage,” brain-computer interfaces can help ALS patients control prosthetics, stroke patients recover, and serve as a new generation of human-computer interfaces in gaming and consumer electronics. Currently in the early stages of development, the market size is expected to reach $1.46 billion by 2020. But the involvement of Facebook and Elon Musk, who co-founded Neuralink, could accelerate the commercialisation of the technology and further expand the market.
Building 8 Create social first consumer electronics
The first project will create a brain-computer interface with output of 100 words per second within two years
The second project is to sense and convey information through nerve touch on the skin
AR glasses: a new general-purpose computing device
Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Oculus, said that the direction of the next generation of Virtual computing is Full AR glass. He defined full-function AR glasses as super powerful, super lightweight, continuous boot, widely accepted by the society AR glasses, will replace mobile phones, become a new generation of universal computing equipment. Abrash specifically pointed out that AR glasses are not only not a hindrance to socialising but will also alert you when you forget someone’s name to avoid embarrassment. However, there are still many obstacles in AR technology at present, and greater breakthroughs are needed in optical display, interactive interface, artificial intelligence and other aspects. Among them, the need to develop AR glasses may become an important driving force for the development of artificial intelligence technology.
As we pointed out in our October 2015 report, “Virtual/Augmented Reality, Dreams Become Reality,” AR commercialization may be two years behind VR. But AR has a stronger tool, in the medical, industrial, construction, logistics, retail and other fields will have a wide range of uses, by 2020, the market size of 120 billion DOLLARS. After 2020, AR/VR is expected to replace PC and smart phone as the main computing device in people’s office and life. With Microsoft HoloLens skipping Gen 2 and going straight to a gen 3 prototype in 2019, we currently believe AR will come of age after 2019.
In addition, Facebook has upgraded VR Surround, which was introduced at last year’s F8, to include X24 and X6, which have six degrees of freedom (up and down, left and right, front and back). The company will license designs to commercial partners with a view to launching the product this year.
The direction of the next generation of virtual computing is fully functional AR glasses
Will become a universal computing device for work and life, even reminding friends of their names in socially awkward moments
However, it needs to achieve greater technological breakthroughs in optical display, interactive interface, artificial intelligence and other aspects
Six-degree of freedom VR cameras Surround360 X24 and X6
Artificial intelligence: Optimize the user experience
Facebook has announced that It is open sourcing the Caffe2 Deep framework and emphasizes that Caffe2 can achieve high efficiency in both data centers and mobile devices. With Caffe2, Facebook’s daily image processing capacity increased 10-fold on the server and 100-fold on the phone. In addition, the company introduced its Mask R-CNN algorithm, under which Facebook can currently process 1 billion video images per second.
In terms of improving user experience, after introducing AI to automatically annotate video content and automatically interpret photos for blind users last year, the company demonstrated this year that AI can perform 3D recognition on a single image to enhance the effect of photos.
The AI performs 3D recognition to beautify the photos
Global networking: Accelerate the development of communication industry and connect more people
Facebook’s global Connectivity project is one of the three cornerstones of its 10-year plan (the other two are AI and AR/VR), with Aquila, Terragraph and MM-Wave (Millimetre Wave) currently being pursued. The company announced three major breakthroughs in wireless transmission: 13km point-to-point transmission at 36Gb per second using millimeter wave technology; 13 km point-to-point transmission of 80Gb/s using optical cross-link technology; Using millimeter wave technology to transmit 16Gb per second between the ground and the uav 7 km above. In addition, the company announced a new networking project, called Tether-Tenna, that uses fiber-optic helicopters to carry out emergency communications missions in times of crisis.
In our report “5G Dawn, New Architecture, Convergence and New Players”, we believe that 5G’s innovative network architecture and the use of high frequency waves will introduce more sub-field competitors. Two Internet giants, Google and Facebook, are already deploying such technologies, including drones and hot air balloons, for wireless relays and coverage of remote areas. They guide the development direction of communication industry with their own needs, but also produce competitive pressure to the companies in the industry and accelerate the evolution of the industry.
Networking projects currently in the works include Aquila, Terragraph and MM-Wave
Three major technological breakthroughs have been made in wireless transmission
Ther-tenna uses helicopters for emergency communications missions
