December 1, 2013

2x3D: View 2D or 3D on one screen

This is fascinating. Researchers from the Shirai Lab at Kanagawa Institute of Technology developed Scritter, a technology which lets us view two-dimensional or three-dimensional visual content simultaneously (as much as to say: for more than one viewers) on one screen. We can switch between these views by wearing a polarisation filter or not. As the researchers say it can be applied to cinemas, education, and medicine.

I think there is a large spectrum of (more) utilization opportunities. For example, I think of a power plant control room where we could see the static structure of the building with all of its pipes and wires, and the dynamic information and energy flow rushing through this complex pipes / wires network, without having to switch between views, which in turn would have an affect to all viewers.

Here is how Scritter (“2x3D”) works:

Some SIGGRAPH ASIA 2012 slides:

via GIZMODO.de,
see also DigInfo.tv
and Scritter @ Shirai Lab @ Kanagawa Inst. of Technology

October 9, 2012

Freehand 3D interaction

Exciting!

And for information visualization one can combine this for example with Google Glasses:

Microsoft Research via GIZMODO.de

July 4, 2012

Bubble display

This new technology seems to be too wet for me.

via GIZMODO.de

May 29, 2012

Haptic experience in 3D

For an room size interaction we may need very big magnets. That seems to be counterproductive.

March 20, 2011

Seeing like a house-fly

By this time there is a prototype of a surround sight camera which allows to identify 3d-geometrics by computing the distances to the camera.

Because of seeing this technology on a 2d-monitor and just a little bit of the output of the camera (for me) it is hard to envision the use case addressed in the video. BVut it seems to be interesting to be able to see like a fly. So than it might also be possible to study insects in a less abstract way!?! Another option is to spot a person the way (light two steps in front of him) without lighten the whole way or even room (for what reason ever ;).

[sti.epfl.ch: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne]

February 4, 2011

Electro-impulses instead of glasses

That’s funny!

But can this be true? To trigger a blink of an eye with mini ‘electro-shocks’ to the temple, that’s possible in my opinion. You need at least 25 blinks / electro impulses for each of the eyes. That’s also feasable, I think. (I don’t know exactly if this is really enough but it has to be the minimum!) But when I try to blink with my eyes as quick as possible everything is getting dark. The amount of time I closed my eyes is bigger than the time I have my eyes open and the ‘open time’ isn’t long enough to process the content / images. So in my point of view this video is funny but not more.

December 31, 2010

“Experience” by printing in 3D

Printing stuff in 3D is a exciting way to innovations. The research assistant Amit Zoran of the MIT Media Lab has printed a flute with this technology. After 3D software design the printing process of the first functional prototype took about 15 hours. The result ist impressing because of the complex structure of a flute (I think).

As Zoran said in his video “the new technologies can enable new designs that are not durable otherwise and may help to develop new acoustic experiences“. His design draft (at the end of the video) looks interesting and lets one divine many more devices we only know by science fiction romans respectively can’t imagine yet.

[media.mit.edu: MIT Media Lab]

November 8, 2010

3D dynamic hologram

Nearly three years ago the University of Arizona (UA) developed | announced a system which was able to print a three dimensional hologram in a couple of minutes. This 3D picture can be seen by human without special glasses.

Today the UA College of Optical Sciences is one step further. 3D, no glasses, one color – it’s all the same but now they can produce one picture in about two seconds!

That’s really nice. Project conferences can be hold virtually in realtime in the future and so for example exhaust fumes can be reduced. OK, one has to check CO2 emissions and so on which is needed to produce 3D hologram systems. But in my opinion that’s the right way and many applications are waiting for this technology.

[optics.arizona.edu: UA College of Optical Sciences]

July 17, 2010

Touchless multi-touch in 3D

As I wrote some time ago, human-machine interaction is going towards the interesting trends we saw in futuristic films years ago. Here is another example of a human-machine interface which reminds us particularly of “Minority Report”. A man is gesticulating with both his hands free in space and on a screen you can see a 3D scene performing appropriate actions.

That’s impressive!

—

But because I’m seeing some disadvantages with this technology for me it isn’t such impressive anymore. The disadvantages or let’s say challenges are:

  • One has to hold his arms continuously in free space, for sure that’s exhausting.
  • What if there are more than two hands / one user? Are the algorithms able to match the hands to the right persons or will there be false recognized (inter)actions?
  • In my opinion the user gestures were adapted to the technology not to real user needs / perceptions.
  • The actions are not accurate enough yet.
  • In the case of the deletion of files some other way would be much better than to move the files to the edges I think. Because this action suggests me that there will be a backup of the files and I#m able to load them again.

And beside the other details a main goal for future investigations has to be to remove the need that a user has to recheck visually what he is doing with his hands (red cross and borders in the video and so on). The user wants to e.g. translate a picture, commands that with his hands and that’s it. The extra necessity to visualize that destroys the / my sensations.

But the technology (free hand gestures and 3d scenes) is a really great step into future!

May 15, 2010

Touchless interface

Exciting new chances and tasks are coming with this conceptual design: