The future of welding helmets?

[rich r]

Spotted this the other day. It's part of a research project on video processing, but that's beside the point. The helmet has two cameras and two LCD screens, so the user has no direct light path from the arc. The important bit of this is that the system adapts to the brightness to present the areas away from the arc as a 'normal' undimmed view. So you end up with a strange view of the workplace - everything looks as if you're not welding, apart from the tip of the tig torch where the arc is.

http://www.eyetap.org/~siggraph2012/

Obviously this isn't a commercial product, nor probably aimed at becoming one. It's a demonstration of their video processing system and how they've come up with a way of handling extreme dynamic range of brightnesses. But maybe one day, something like this will become commercially available as a sort of next generation of auto-dimming helmets?

 

[pedrobedro]

Did Dr Who really visit the future ? They will have to make it a lot smaller before it becomes viable for real work situations and why didn't they show a proper welder using it ?

 

[W4yne]

Well it's good to see they have solved the problem with sparks in ears!

Did Dr Who really visit the future ? They will have to make it a lot smaller before it becomes viable for real work situations and why didn't they show a proper welder using it ?

 

[500e]

"why didn't they show a proper welder using it ?"
Looked like me on a good day
Scary Welds though! would have thought Miller would have done better.

 

[penfold]

"why didn't they show a proper welder using it ?"
Looked like me on a good day
Scary Welds though! would have thought Miller would have done better.

Not half! I can do better than that; good examples of how not to TIG!

Bloody clever bit of kit though.

 

[rich r]

I suspect the chap is rather better at electronics and programming...

 

[Sean]

bleeding edge technology and a fair bit of tank tape!

i understand the tank tape bit.

 

[Robotstar5]

Nice find, I liked watching the electrode pulse at about 4 mins

 

[hotrodder]

Interesting research project. Doesn't help that all the welding was done by people that don't have the first clue how to weld but the view of the weldpool is pants imo... seems like they've spent time enhancing the view in areas that don't matter (being able to read the serial numbers on the pipe etc) while the arc itself is too bright with respect to the weldpool. Obviously that applies less for remote viewing of welding operations than it does for the person doing the actual welding

Obviously time and development will reduce the size of the kit but i can't ever see it being lighter/less bulky than todays ADFs and they're still heavier/bulkier than a fixed shade lens

Plenty of potential applications but i'm thinking all those that were included in the vid are the wrong ones- the bright sunny day/glare through a car windscreen all looked wrong/not as clear as is available through a decent pair of sunglasses.

 

[MattF]

the bright sunny day/glare through a car windscreen all looked wrong/not as clear as is available through a decent pair of sunglasses.

Sunglasses don't have the potential to suffer technical glitches which completely remove your view of traffic either. Give me good old fashioned low tech any day.

 

[Browser]

I can see the benefit from a training point of view, with the application of that technology that told you when you were too close/too far away/wrong torch angle etc. Think about it gents, give this technology a few years to become mainstream and (theoretically) you could take some untrained nit, give them a few weeks of 'this is the torch/this is the eartch clamp' type training then set him up with this system and all he has to do is follow it, and (again theoretically) he can stick metal together as well as someone who came up the more conventional route. I am massively oversimplifying things and not accounting for faults with gear/changing job & workplace conditions etc but you get my drift?
Going back to the technology, imaging how it would be if they figred out how to encode the received information and connect it to the optic nerve? Stereoscopic vision for blind people too far a stretch to imagine?

 

[MattF]

I can see the benefit from a training point of view, with the application of that technology that told you when you were too close/too far away/wrong torch angle etc. Think about it gents, give this technology a few years to become mainstream and (theoretically) you could take some untrained nit, give them a few weeks of 'this is the torch/this is the eartch clamp' type training then set him up with this system and all he has to do is follow it, and (again theoretically) he can stick metal together as well as someone who came up the more conventional route. I am massively oversimplifying things and not accounting for faults with gear/changing job & workplace conditions etc but you get my drift?

Filter appropriately a bog standard camera lens and record it.

Going back to the technology, imaging how it would be if they figred out how to encode the received information and connect it to the optic nerve? Stereoscopic vision for blind people too far a stretch to imagine?

That could also lead onto the doomsayer predictions where a virtual world becomes a plausible reality, once you start feeding signals to the mind. Just saying mind. I'm not wearing a tin foil hat. Honest.