Manipulating holographic images?

steven · Post by **steven** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:27 am

Do you believe that in the future (lets say 100 years later), manipulating holographic images could be possible (like those interface concepts shown in minority report and paycheck)? And why yes or no?

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:43 am

Do you mean edit, airbrush, synthesize? Sure - if you can manipulate the speckles, you control the image. The hardware and software is a lot closer than a hundred years.

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Thu May 20, 2004 2:07 pm

I think you can do it now, albeit crudely.
Detectors that detect in 3D are already available. If such a detector were to be placed to detect something within a cube in front of the hologram, eg a finger position and you correlated the detector with the x,y,z co-ords of the image field, then the response from the detector would determine where in x,y,z space your finger was and where in the same space the 'manipulating object' (a holographic button, eg) was or was not. On detection, you could alter the reconstruction beam to another one showing another hologram. You do need pretty good Bragg selectivity to make this work in practice.

steven · Post by **steven** » Thu May 20, 2004 4:37 pm

thats just what i wanna hear. thanks a lot!

steven · Post by **steven** » Thu May 20, 2004 4:39 pm

well, i mean controlling digital objects (images) in the air.
for example, a holographic user interface, with buttons etc...

Arturo · Post by **Arturo** » Thu May 20, 2004 4:56 pm

They've already done this at MIT:

http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/spi/hapHolog.htm

steven · Post by **steven** » Thu May 20, 2004 5:41 pm

wonderful example arturo, thanks!
one more question, do you think that in the future a pen tool is not needed anymore to interact with those holographic images? just only with bare hands?

Arturo · Post by **Arturo** » Thu May 20, 2004 5:59 pm

I'd bet on that... have you seen the new playstation games in wich a webcam type of camera captures the player's motions allowing games in which there is no need for a controller-pad, and the kids can "kill bugs" on screen just moving their hands? That would be one way to go... probably, combining that with electromagnetic fields measures will end up giving enough precission to substitute any other device.

Or at least you can probably reduce that to a sensitive glove already

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Thu May 20, 2004 5:59 pm

What's "haptic"? I can guess from the context, but I've never heard the word.

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Thu May 20, 2004 6:02 pm

Or could you use retinal scanning and head tracking, making anything "digital" unecessary?