Amazing as volumetric displays are, they have one major drawback: interacting with them is complicated. A 3D mouse is nice, but unless you’ve done a lot of CAD work, it’s a bit unintuitive. Researchers from the Public University of Navarra, however, have developed a touchable volumetric display, bringing touchscreen-like interactions to the third dimension (preprint paper).
At the core, this is a swept-volume volumetric display: a light-diffusing screen oscillates along one axis, while from below a projector displays cross-sections of the scene in synchrony with the position of the screen. These researchers replaced the normal screen with six strips of elastic material. The finger of someone touching the display deforms one or more of the strips, allowing the touch to be detected, while also not damaging the display.
The actual hardware is surprisingly hacker-friendly: for the screen material, the researchers settled on elastic bands intended for clothing, and two modified subwoofers drove the screen’s oscillation. Indeed, some aspects of the design actually cite this Hackaday article. While the citation misattributes the design, we’re glad to see a hacker inspiring professional research.) The most exotic component is a very high-speed projector (on the order of 3,000 fps), but the previously-cited project deals with this by hacking a DLP projector, as does another project (also cited in this paper as source 24) which we’ve covered.
While interacting with the display does introduce some optical distortions, we think the video below speaks for itself. If you’re interested in other volumetric displays, check out this project, which displays images with a levitating styrofoam bead.
[Thanks to Xavi for the tip!]
While this is very cool, it feels more like a novelty art piece than a practical device. It’s hard to imagine building a daily-use device with the low resolution, material wear, and sound pollution this probably involves.
Most prototypes are novelty art pieces. This could totally be made into a practical device and I’d like to buy one.
Tis research. And it is really cool. And now that it is doable, the next step is make a practical system. Like why not use low power laser technology for example, to break the beams at different levels to get the same 3D handling affect, so no moving parts… Or whatever. It is all above the idea! And it is cool.
“It is all about the idea” (nice to edit…)
That was true of early OLED prototypes.
And LCDs.
And CRTs.
And film projectors.
And photography.
And printing.
Thank goodness people with talent develop their ideas anyway.
Surely you meant “that video speaks volumes”?
Very cool. It will take time, but I could imagine that evolving into a practical, usable technology. A clever new idea and a well implemented demonstration.
I wonder if noise levels could be reduced by shifting the phase of each band 180 degrees out of phase with its neighbors (or something similar). This would introduce boundary effects but perhaps the noise cancellation at the fundamental frequency would be worth it.
“While the citation misattributes the design, we’re glad to see a hacker inspiring professional research”
It would have been nice to see a mention to my project https://hackaday.io/project/180304-vvd-an-open-source-real-3d-volumetric-display , which was actually cited, and also an Hackaday project…
Very impressive, and definitely deserves an article edit.
Thank you for pointing that out; I hadn’t realized that your project was cited. The link under “another project we’ve covered” does lead to our article about your project, but I’ve updated the article to note that the research did cite your project.
Why not use a Leap Motion Controller (or similar) for contactless and precise manual input? I believe all your basic hand movements for manipulating an object in 3D space (6DOF) can be easily trained and mapped to the corresponding action / object movement.
I’m actually surprised to not see any solid integrations utilizing Leap Motion Controllers as 3D mice, which are commonly used by CADers.