page_title: Steve Mann (inventor)
section_title: Ideas and inventions
hierarchical_section_title: Steve Mann (inventor) / Career / Ideas and inventions
caption_attribution_description: English: Lights-in-motion become sight-in-motion: Surveilluminescent light strip shows the sightfield of an image array or vision sensor, by way of long-exposure photography. For more information, see http://www.cv-foundation.org/openaccess/content_cvpr_workshops_2014/W17/papers/Mann_The_Sightfield_Visualizing_2014_CVPR_paper.pdf
context_page_description: William Stephen George Mann is a Canadian engineer, professor, and inventor known for his work in augmented reality, computational photography, particularly wearable computing, and high dynamic range imaging. He also founded InteraXon, makers of the Muse and Muse2 brain-sensing headband, and is also a founding member of the IEEE Council on Extended Intelligence.
  Mann was born in Canada, and currently lives in Stanford/Palo Alto, California, with his wife and two children.
context_section_description: Many of Mann's inventions pertain to the field of computational photography.
  Chirplet transform, 1991: Mann was the first to propose and reduce to practice a signal representation based on a family of chirp signals, each associated with a coefficient, in a generalization of the wavelet transform that is now referred to as the chirplet transform.
  "Digital Eye Glass," "Eye Glass," "Glass Eye," or "Glass", 1978: a device that, when worn, causes the human eye itself to effectively become both an electronic camera and a television display.
  Comparametric equations, 1993: Mann was the first to propose and implement an algorithm to estimate a camera's response function from a plurality of differently exposed images of the same subject matter. He was also the first to propose and implement an algorithm to automatically extend dynamic range in an image by combining multiple differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter.
  High-dynamic-range imaging (HDR): "The first report of digitally combining multiple pictures of the same scene to improve dynamic range appears to be Mann." (Robertson et al.) Mann's work on wearable computing was motivated by his early computer vision systems that helped people see better (e.g. while welding, or in other high-dynamic range situations, with dynamic range management, overlays, and augmentation as well as diminishment in both the additive and subtractive sense).
  Hydraulophone: Mann invented an experimental musical instrument that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid, such as water, to make sound. The instrument is played by placing the fingers in direct contact with the sound-producing hydraulic fluid, thus giving the musician a high degree of control over the musical expression in the sound.
  Integral kinematics and integral kinesiology: principles of negative derivatives (integrals) of displacement, such as absement (the area under the displacement-time curve), as embodied by hydraulophones (water-based instruments). This work has been built upon by others, and also forms the basis for a new way of understanding electrical engineering. See also Mann's 2014 paper, "Integral Kinematics (Time‐Integrals of Distance, Energy, etc.) and Integral Kinesiology."
  Natural user interface: In the 1980s and '90s, Mann developed a number of user-interface strategies using natural interaction with the real world as an alternative to a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI). Mann referred to this work as "Natural User Interfaces", "Direct User Interfaces", and "Metaphor-Free Computing"
  Scratch input, an acoustic-based method of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that takes advantage of the characteristic sound produced when a finger nail, stick, or other object strikes or is dragged over a surface, such as a table or wall.
  Sensory Singularity, together with Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil, Mann proposed the theory of the "Sensularity" Sensory Singularity and cyborg-logging.
  Surveilluminescent wand: a device for visualizing vision and seeing sight, by way of making visible the sightfield (time-reversed lightfield) of a camera or similar computer vision sensor, using time-exposure with array of surveilluminescent lights to make visible to one camera what another camera can see.
  Telepointer and SixthSense, a wearable computer based on a pendant that contains a webcam and laser-based infinite depth-of-focus projector, and related technologies for gesture-based wearable computing systems.
  Video Orbits, 1993: Mann was the first to produce an algorithm for automatically combining multiple pictures of the same subject matter, using algebraic projective geometry, to "stitch together" images using automatically estimated perspective correction. This is called the "Video Orbits" algorithm.
  Mann also works in the fields of computer-mediated reality. He is a strong advocate of privacy rights, for which work he was an award recipient of the Chalmers Foundation in the fine arts. His work also extends to the area of sousveillance (a term he coined for "inverse surveillance"). Mann and one of his PhD studen
caption: Surveilluminescent wand: When moved through space in a long-exposure photograph, it makes the sightfield of a surveillance camera visible.
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