Skip to Main Content

Technology: Micrsoft Hololens

Microsoft Hololens

Microsoft Hololens Augmented Reality System

About

The Microsoft Hololens is the library’s first augmented reality system, which takes interactive virtual elements and blends them in with a user’s current environment. Unlike VR systems, the Hololens is a self-contained unit that does not need to maintain a connection with a PC, which allows it to be used anywhere. Also unlike VR systems, the Hololens primarily utilizes hand gestures and voice commands for user interaction.

Applications Available

The Innovation Space at Ginsburg Health Sciences Library has a variety of medical AR applications available:

  • HoloAnatomy - A holographic anatomy viewer that allows users to view anatomy in 3D and provides quizzes designed to teach anatomy; designed by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic
  • INSIGHT HEART - A holographic anatomy viewer specializing in the heart
  • HoloPhobia: Spiders - An exposure therapy AR program that, under user-controlled guidance, creates holographic spiders to help cure people of arachnophobia (fear of spiders)
  • White Cane - An experimental app designed  for the blind that uses the Hololens to map environments and communicate their proximity to the user with sounds

The Innovation Space also has some other educational AR apps and tools:

  • HoloTour -  A guided and narrated holographic tour of cities around the globe
  • The Thin Red Line - A holographic firefighting simulation that scans your environment, sets fires, and then trains users on how to extinguish them
  • Holo Measure - An AR app that helps map and measure things, using the inside-out algorithm unique to the Hololens
  • Verto Studio - An AR app that lets users design and create 3D models for 3D printing
  • Holo Graph - A data visualization tool that creates 3D, holographic models of data sets

The Innovation Space also has some AR games:

  • RoboRaid - Fend off alien invaders as they tunnel and burst through the walls and floor, and fly around shooting balls of energy at you
  • HoloTankz - Position and control small, holographic tanks in a real-time tactical style (or RTS) game
  • Fragments - A CSI-like murder mystery for you to solve, via the ability to read the history of objects you touch
  • HoloRoll - An AR app that challenges users to create Rube Goldberg-ian arrays of inclines and devices to get a red ball from side of the room to the other
  • The Floor is Lava - No, really, it actually is; try to set the longest record for survival