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Writer's pictureSandra Verhoeff

The HoloLens

So we decide to drive to Calgary—a Remembrance Day long weekend family trip. It was a long drive, but we were blessed with pretty good road conditions and avoided the snow drama. We found a great little AirBnB one block from the office of our Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) practitioner, Madison Martin. Madison is the loveliest. A while ago, I remembered her talking about the University of Calgary research team and their bleeding edge technology—the HoloLens. In simple layperson’s terms, it is a virtual reality (VR) head set and app that has a “virtual letter board” accessible to the user. It’s way too cool. So I emailed Madison and asked if we could check it out and meet the research team? She jumped at the possibility and set up our first session on Nov. 10 with Lorens Alabood, Ph.D. and Engineering student, Ahmad. What a trip! They put the VR headsets on both Luke and Madison, and Luke was able to point to letters on the virtual letterboard with a little coaching from Madison. Mind blowing! Even my husband Dave, my son Joel, and I were able to see it in action (taking turns with the headset). The headset would even say the letters out loud as Luke pointed to them. To level up the experience, he was offered the opportunity to be the first guinea pig in their latest eye-tracking app. Instead of pointing, they calibrated Luke’s eye-tracking speed to their system (look at the “A, E, U, and Z”—four corners of the letterboard), and then they asked him to spell his name just by LOOKING at the letters with his eyes. He did it so split-second fast that I didn’t even see it. Dave and Joel did, and they were both blown away. I had to rewind the footage to witness it. Boom. The research guys were beyond thrilled. We’re keen to set up the next testing opportunity ASAP! When we later asked Luke “What do you want to spend your money on?”, he said “NOW, A HOLOLENS.”


Stardate November 10, 2024: I feel very Trekkie writing this blog entry. To go where no man has gone before. Our Luke.





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