William Stephen George Mann (born 8 June 1962) is a Canadian engineer, professor, and inventor who works in augmented reality, computational photography, particularly wearable computing, and high-dynamic-range imaging.
He cofounded InteraXon, makers of the Muse brain-sensing headband, and is also a founding member of the IEEE Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI). Mann is currently CTO and cofounder at Blueberry X Technologies and Chairman of MannLab.
EyeTap is the world’s first digital eyeglass, invented by Professor Mann in 1984, almost 30 years before Google Glass arrived in 2013. EyeTap displays computer information to the user and allows the computer to process and augment what the user sees. This allows the EyeTap to augment the user’s visual perception of their environment, which creates a Computer Mediated Reality.
There are endless potential applications for EyeTap for both personal and commercial use. One use, for instance, would be a sports EyeTap. Here the wearer, while in a stadium, would be able to follow a particular player in a field and have the EyeTap display statistics relevant to that player as a floating box above the player.
Another practical use for the EyeTap would be in a construction yard where it would allow the user to reference 3D digital blueprints to the current state of the building.
Mann has authored more than 200 publications, books and patents, and his work and inventions have been shown at the Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History, The Science Museum, MoMA, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and Triennale di Milano.
According to Wikipedia/Mannlab
