Holographic Keypads Float Into View

prostoalex writes "The New York Times tells the story of a Connecticut-based company called HoloTouch that is developing input devices that literally "float in the air". The technology will be licensed for information kiosks in New York city. Some other sample applications are available from the company's Web site. HoloTouch already managed to secure the patent on its technology."

Comments

Society for Information Display

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant blame slashdot but the NYT is lagging a bit as I remember seeing it in an article last september here even has some of the same pictures.
article follows:

HoloTouch Unveils "Controls that Float in Thin Air"

Darien, Connecticut, September 12 - HoloTouch, Inc. announced today that it will introduce its new holographic control technology into operating rooms and other sterile environments. HoloTouch(TM) patented technology enables controls that float in thin air, allowing healthcare personnel to manage a wide variety of electronic devices by simply "touching" 3D holographic images floating at a convenient location.

"Surgeons often need to view footage from the beginning of a medical procedure. With HoloTouch, the controls are contained in holographic images, projected directly in front of the surgeon. The surgeon's hands may be covered in blood, but, since the "button" to be pushed consists only of beams of light, there are no contamination issues," said HoloTouch inventor and President R. Douglas McPheters.

John D. Fisher, M.D., Director of Arrhythmia Services and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, praised the new technology as a significant improvement over existing methods. "During angioplasties, pacemaker implantations, and other cardiac procedures we must be able to quickly see the visual record of the patient's condition at various times since the beginning of the procedure. With HoloTouch, the surgeon is in direct control of this visual record, eliminating the delay and risk of misinterpretation that exists under present systems," Dr. Fisher said.

The company is speaking with several manufacturers interested in licensing HoloTouch for use in high-end audio-visual equipment, car phones, "factory floor" applications, military hardware, and other electronic devices, McPheters said.

Re:real, or just killing real invention?

[saddino]

I see nothing on their website (other than very obviously mocked up fake pictures) or in the patent that says they really know how to do this.

Huh? Their patent appears to explain exactly how to do this (hint: see the "DETAILED DESCRIPTION" section).

Re:Tactile Feedback is important

[mblase]

Anybody see the lack of tactile feedback as a problem?

Only if they fail to combine it with some sort of visual and/or audio feedback -- such as making the number you press blink white and go "bing!" when you touch it.

Re:real, or just killing real invention?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to re-read the article more carefully. The "invention" is a good deal less exciting than you would expect. I interpreted it as a hologram-generation technology too, when I first read it. However:

Under his system, a holographic keypad begins with a holographic image of a real keypad, recorded by lasers on photographic film. This image is mounted on a plastic plate, which has infrared sensors behind it that can detect when the keypad is manipulated. When a light behind the plate is activated, the image appears to hover in front of it.

It's just a plain-vanilla hologram with some sensors to tell when you're finger would be sticking through it.

Re:look before leap

[Elwood P Dowd]

Uh... people with only one eye can't see the 3D aspect of a hologram. They can see a 2D picture just fine.

If they move their head, then they can see the 3d aspect as well.

One eyed folks will do just fine here.

Re:real, or just killing real invention?

[frovingslosh]

Huh? Their patent appears to explain exactly how to do this (hint: see the "DETAILED DESCRIPTION" section).

Been there, read that. OK, maybe I just don't get it, but you tell me how The holographic image generator 200 actually manages to display a real time changing holographic image and then I'll accept that they have something. I just don't see anything in the patent or on their website that says they can really do this.

Comments about device

[merlin_jim]

Unfortunately they didn't do their homework :(

From the website:

HoloTouch, images of keypads can be any size, entirely independent of the size of the hardware.

(emphasis my own)

From the patent:

When a hologram is illuminated by a reconstruction beam, it produces a real image (which appears to be between the plane of the hologram and the viewer) and a virtual image (which appears to be behind the plane of the hologram). [snip] Thus, it is preferred that the holographic image 207 be a real image.

Quick review of holography: an extremely high resolution film takes pictures of the interference pattern generated when a coherent light beam strikes an object.

When coherent light of a similar wavelength later shines through this film, the interference patterns cause it to be shined through in exactly the same manner as the original coherent light, up to about half the resolution of the film. Most holographic film is 3000 lines per inch, so the hologram has a "resolution" of about 1500 lines per inch.

You see an image because the light reaching your eyes through the film is exactly as it would be had the object been in front of your eyes and illuminated by the original beam.

The light reaching your eyes is coming through the film and then traveling in a straight line from the film to your eyes. You can only see such light if the holograph is directly behind it, because the path of the photons cannot change after it passes through the hologram (disregarding minor lensing effects due to the atmosphere, that is)

What does this mean? Well if the hologram appears to be one half meter in front of you and the holographic film is one meter in front of you, and the holographic image appears to be 10 cm x 10 cm, then the minimum possible size for the holographic film is 20 cm x 20 cm.

I don't call that entirely independent; as a matter of fact, it's a pretty simple relationship governed by a version of the inverse square law.

Oh, an interesting fact about it is if you take a holographic film and cut it in half, because all the information about the image is stored throughout the film, you don't have half a hologram; you have a hologram of the entire object that is half the size of the original. Pretty cool stuff actually.

Re:Comments about device

[merlin_jim]

So can we extrapolate how big our Visa cards would be if they didn't chop the dove down to giblet size?

Were it a film holograph, with the right equipment you could; in that laser's have a characteristic coherency, and holograms can only be produced by one of about half a dozen different types of lasers, simply because you have to manufacture the film specifically for the process, and the film only gets cheap in massive quantities. So you could peel the hologram off, or setup an optical front surface mirror arrangement allowing you to shine different types of laser light through and measure the change in coherency.

How does that help? Slicing the image down changed the coherency of the interference pattern. If you shine the original type of laser through it and measure the change in coherency with an interferometer, you can measure the amount of information lost; that corresponds exactly to the change in area

However, the dove on the VISA card is almost certainly a mechanical hologram, not a film hologram. Basically, because atoms are significantly smaller than photons, you can take a hologram and create a metal stamp based on it, and then use that stamp to create a holographic impression on a plastic or metal foil. It's a cheap way to mass produce holograms. But you lose a lot of the coherency information, which is why mass produced holograms are always virtual images (they appear to be inside of, rather than outside of, the hologram), because virtual images are more forgiving of slight errors in the process.

Re:Comments about device

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, an interesting fact about it is if you take a holographic film and cut it in half, because all the information about the image is stored throughout the film, you don't have half a hologram; you have a hologram of the entire object that is half the size of the original.

That's is interesting, but it's not true. You do lose information. What you loose is look angles. When you cut the film in half, it's like cutting the window to the hologram in half.

Re:Tactile Feedback is important

[blamanj]

you would expect some type of feedback

Indeed, but tactile is not the only possible form. Auditory feedback and visual feedback both work, though for touch-typing speeds, visual isn't acceptable...too slow.

I've used a projection-keyboard system (non-holographic). It takes some getting used to but it's pretty amazing. Expect to see it in cell phones/PDAs within the next 2-3 years.

It's NOT vaporware....

[callipygian-showsyst]

...I saw it demonstrated at SIGGRAPH last week. They projected a keyboard on a surface, and you could go up to it and "type" on the projection.

It worked quite well.

Re:look before leap

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

You just can't see a stereoscopic vision allowing you to definitely position the object in three dimensional space. But the eyes use other cues than stereoscopic vision to determine position, cues like parallax and brightness, as well as ocular focus.


Yeah, but these holograms are projected from a reasonably small screen, so they probably use stereoscopic separation to produce the holographic keypad. Without stereoscopic cues, I think you'd have quite a hard time trying to find the intersection of the projected image and the imaginary view plane. Even if you could do it, it would be far from useful.

The brightness of an object may help a little in the holo keypad, but not much. And the only way to acheive paralax would be to swing your head in circles while looking at the keypad. I doubt anyone wants to pull up to an ATM and do a "You go girl" head movement to see the keypad while the cars behind look on. Anyway, these cues are usually backup cues for stereoscopic separation.

I don't think this is a HUGE issue. I'm just pointing out details.

Re:look before leap

[merlin_jim]

Yeah, but these holograms are projected from a reasonably small screen, so they probably use stereoscopic separation to produce the holographic keypad.

Actually, the patent as written doesn't work. The patent indicates they are using traditional film holography, which cannot be projected from a small screen. For a discussion about the subject, see this post.

I'm not saying this display would be extremely useable for a one-eyed person; I know from experience it would not. While I am still blessed with two working eyes, they have significantly different attributes and my vision without corrective optics is almost entirely two dimensional. All the same, I can see the image, which the original poster averred would not be the case.