SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Trisha Reyes emerged from BLACKROOM with tears in her eyes, but far from being melancholy, she was grateful. The Tucson lawyer had just talked to her deceased mom who she lost in 1997 in a car accident. “There were some things I needed to say to her,” she said, obviously still moved. “It was life-changing.”
What Ms. Reyes experienced was the latest development in BLACKROOM simulation technology at HOXAR Inc.’s Scottsdale facility. That technology, Predictive Memory (PMT) analyzes a participant’s memories and uses them to construct a simulation that is incredibly lifelike, non-predictable and responsive.
“We are still in the development phase,” said Dr. Santiago Sonora, Chief Engineer on the project. “But these results show incredible promise.” HOXAR has had tremendous success with its existing BLACKROOM technology which creates an interactive, 3D hoxel simulation that is indistinguishable from reality. Its entertainment products, particularly Happy Lane and The Curse of the Ebon Raven, have also been incredibly popular, often with month’s-long waiting lists.
What PMT does that separates it from BLACKROOM is its ability to bring the participant’s memories to life and then extend and build upon them to create unforgettable and unpredictable experiences.
“In the case of Trisha Reyes, for instance,” said Dr. Sonora, “we analyze all her memories before she enters BLACKROOM. We use those memories to, in effect, create new memories based upon what she would expect to see. Her mother’s behavior and words are entirely procedural, of course, but with predictive memory technology, she is behaving exactly as her daughter would expect her to behave.”
PMT is also in demand for police and military training. “One of the challenges we face when training our officers is the predictability of the simulations,” said Sgt. Dave Joyce of the Scottsdale Police Force. “PMT allows us to take into account the memories of our officers, their fears, their concerns and previous things they’ve encountered in the field. Using PMT, we can createscenarios we could never actually design.”
PMT has been in development at HOXAR for five years by a team of 70 individuals, including software and hardware engineers, designers, nano-psychologists and artists. The technology will be made available to commercial and government clients in early next year and the general public a year later following FTA approval.
Critics have cited privacy concerns relating to the memory scanning and storage of the participant information. Underscoring the same concerns, Dr. Sonora noted that the system was designed to protect participants from its inception.
“Inside BLACKROOM, we have our own devices, and those devices are encrypted in such a way that access really isn’t possible without a digital fingerprint and password which the users set. We are confident that it is secure.”