Facebook (FB) is mainly known for its social media platform full of memes and cat videos. But at its annual developer conference, F8, this week it touched on four hardware projects being developed in two new hardware labs: Area 404 for its main lab and Building 8 reserved for an all-star tech team to work on secretive hardware devices.
The 22,000-square foot Area 404 lab was named after the "Not Found" error code because its individual hardware teams had wanted a combined space but couldn't find one -- until Area 404 opened last year. The lab is located in Facebook's Menlo Park office and has room for all of its teams, with more than 50 workbenches in the main area. "With this new space, we can now handle the majority of our modeling, prototyping, and failure analysis in-house, decreasing each iteration of the development cycle from weeks to days," Facebook CNC model maker Spencer Burns wrote in a blog post.
But even before Area 404 opened, Facebook announced last April that Building 8 would be a research lab for hardware projects built by "world-class experts to develop seemingly impossible products that define new categories," according to a job page showing open positions for the team. The group is allowed to work on projects for two years before Facebook decides whether they're worth continuing. To head the team of Building 8 experts, Facebook poached Regina Dugan, formerly a head of DARPA, from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects Group.
The hardware projects that Facebook's teams are currently working on in Area 404 and Building 8 are all part of the company's 10-year technology roadmap to make the world more open and connected. To see which hardware projects Facebook highlighted at this week's conference, keep reading.
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Editors' pick: Originally published April 22.
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"What if you could type directly from your brain?" asked Facebook's Building 8 head Regina Dugan at this week's F8 conference.
While technology already exists to allow people to type with their minds, it currently requires surgical implants. Facebook wants to allow people to type at 100 words per minute through non intrusive devices, such as a headband.
Facebook currently has 60 engineers working on this brain-scanning technology. Dugan said that people will be able to keep certain thoughts private and certain thoughts public (or typed out) while using the technology.
As previously mentioned, the Building 8 team is allowed to work on projects for two years before Facebook decides whether they're worth continuing. So far, the group has worked on this project for six months.
On Wednesday, Facebook's Connectivity Lab head Yael Maguire announced that it was working on "Tether-tenna," or a small helicopter that will fly over an area to provide Internet access during disasters when Wi-Fi towers aren't working.
"When completed, this technology will be able to be deployed immediately and operate for months at a time to bring back connectivity in case of an emergency - ensuring the local community can stay connected while the in-ground connectivity is under repair," Maguire wrote in a blog post. "This is still in the early stages of development and lots of work is needed to ensure that it will be able operate autonomously for months at a time, but we're excited about the progress so far."
Maguire's team is also working on the Aquila drone that has a wingspan bigger than a Boeing 737 airplane but weighs just a third as much as an electric car. The goal is for the drone to provide Internet access to remote parts of the world. The drone flew for 96 minutes this past June before it crashed upon landing due to a strong gust of wind. Facebook hopes it can eventually fly Aquila for 60 to 90 days at a time.
The second project that Facebook's Building 8 team is working on is a device that will allow deaf people to hear through their own skin based on the idea of Braille, or the raised dots that allow blind people to read.
In an early experiment of this technology, the team had a person strap on a device that sent vibrations to his arm that corresponded with words, Dugan explained. In other words, different frequencies represented different words.
Eventually, Dugan can see people using this technology to receive a text message from someone without having to interrupt a conversation with a different person in order to take out their phone and check the message. In addition, this technology may advance to allow people who speak different languages to communicate through this common language.
As previously mentioned, the Building 8 team is allowed to work on projects for two years before Facebook decides whether they're worth continuing. So far, the group has worked on this project for six months.
On Wednesday, Facebook's CTO Mark Schroepfer announced the second generation of its Surround 360 camera design. The new cameras are called the x24, featuring 24 cameras on an orb, and the smaller x6, which features six cameras on an orb.
Unlike the original Surround 360 camera announced at last year's F8 event, these cameras use six degrees of freedom (SDOF) to allow a VR headset wearer to move around in about a meter and a half of space to observe an object closer or to simply walk around a space. This effect allows users to feel more immersed in a scene. In addition, while last year's camera became an open-source project on GitHub, Facebook is planning to work with partners to manufacture the x6 and x24 to bring them to market later this year.
Facebook has an interest in creating more immersive 360-degree videos because doing so should help it sell more of its Oculus Rift VR headsets or the more affordable $130 Gear VR device that Facebook partnered with Samsung ( SSNLF) to create.
According to New York-based research firm SuperData, Oculus Rift is estimated to have sold 355,088 units in 2016, a number that's less than its three main competitors despite having the earliest launch date. The HTC Vive sold an estimated 420,108 units in 2016, vs. Playstation VR's 2,602,3078 units and Google's Daydream View 450,083 units.
