Touchable holography
Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda and his colleagues at Tokyo University are making headway in haptic holography, 3D projections you can actually feel. I first experienced something like this probably 15 years ago at the late holography pioneer Steve Benton's laboratory at MIT's Media Lab. Back then, the hologram was grainy and grayscale and the physical feedback came from a handheld Phantom stylus that provided some sensation of touching a real object. Based on this demonstration, it appears that the technology has come a long way. From Reuters:
By using ultrasonic waves, the scientists have developed software that creates pressure when a user's hand "touches" a hologram that is projected."Japan scientists create 3-D images you can touch" (Reuters, thanks Bob Pescovitz!)
In order to track a user's hand, the researchers use control sticks from Nintendo's popular Wii gaming system that are mounted above the hologram display area.
The technology has so far been tested with relatively simple objects, although the researchers have more practical plans, including virtual switches at hospitals, for example, and other places where contamination by touch is an issue.
Touchable Holography (University of Tokyo)
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The youtube graphic looks like a face!
hot diggity, my star trek dream world is closer than ever!
Hellooo, Counselor Troi!
How long until we can have sex with holograms?
...Come on, you know you wondered.
Hellooo, Counselor Troi!
Qapla' Worf!
I wonder if the ultrasonic waves bother animals? Like a dog whistle would...
That. Is. AWESOME. All those awesome holographic interfaces they have in the movies are now technically possible!
Don't they know the holodeck ALWAYS runs amok?
@ Moriarty:
"Damn! The last time that happened, I got slapped with three paternity suits!"
-Zapp Brannigan
Kind of reminds me of Umberto Eco's "Travels in Hyper-reality", a series of essays about his trips to museums and such locales that claim to provide a version of reality "more real" than the original (for instance, "the last supper" recreated as a life-sized tableau vivant made of wax figures).
David, have you tried this? I did at SIGGRAPH, and the experience and claims don't line up.
The touch sensation was faint and not evocative of any real touch. The visual part just did not work-- the perceived depth was further away than the intended volume, and the viewer's eyes had to be at a specific height, making it very difficult to see it at all unless you're ~5'7".
And Moriarty, you ought to know about problems on the holodeck.
Sounds like it's more of a force-feedback thing that actual touch.
Haptic demos should be tried before posted. This thing was a real letdown at Siggraph this year. The only reason it's being making the rounds online is because it sounds good on paper.
A rather crude imitation of the virtual reality in which we all currently reside.
It's been done.
Siggraph always has plenty of cool-sounding demos that aren't very impressive in person (and thankfully a few that are). Several years back I tried a demo of an interface that was supposed to simulate biting into food. Suffice it to say, nobody was going to mistake that sanitized pneumatic pressure gauge for an actual apple.
brainspore, was that the cracker simulating one? I remember that.
Phased-array ultrasonic transducer. Gotta like that.
MDH: The sad thing was that I couldn't tell which setting was supposed to simulate a cracker and which was supposed to be an apple. I felt so bad for the technicians who polled me afterward.
Doesn't CNN have this already?
These Wright brothers, they only flew for a few seconds. In their inflight meal, I couldn't tell the difference between a cracker and an apple... flight will never be a commercial venture.