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Polymer Vision Produces 5" Rollable Displays
drquizas writes "Polymer Vision (associated with Philips) has produced a rollable display using organic electronic techniques. The display, currently measuring 5" diagonal and capable of displaying QVGA at 320x240, will eventually be targeted towards applications such as military uses (maps anyone?), newspapers and e-books."
This sounds like it's a bit small for the need to be rolled up. It happens to be the same resolution as the Pocket PC I'm coding for at my job, and it is rather small. I guess perhaps this could be merely a proof of concept to show they can do something like this, while they work on making something bigger.
In Tablet PCs they have this neat mercury switch that allows you to tilt the tablet right to flip forward or left to flip backward. I'm sure that they'd implement this into the new books eventually.
:)
That way you can still flip the pages.
-Scott
Imagine having one of these displays with a little USB hookup, a couple of page turning buttons, and nothing else. If the price drops enough, newspapers could sell them to customers along with a subscription service that allows them to download the morning's paper before they head off to work. No more recycling, no more ink-stained fingers...
I realize this is already sort of possible with laptops/pda's, etc.. but there's something comforting about a convenient rolled up paper on the bus ride in. Plus it can be used to swat pesky mosquitos!
This is good news for paper reduction. I suppose it is also good news for squirrels and other tree loving animals...
From the article:
Further, "the life of our organic electronics displays has been already prolonged from ?hours to months," [Bas van Rens, general manager at Polymer Vision] added.
I'm trying to figure this one out... is he saying that this cool roll-up display, with four shades of grey and readable as paper, will self destruct after a few months?
And they're so hard to produce, that he can only make 5000 a year? Just to have ten engineers running the line at $100k/yr (or one executive at $1m/yr) would make each one cost $500 bucks.
No wonder he's targeting the military. Nobody else can afford to spend $500-$1000 on displays that don't last much longer than a gallon of milk in a wet paper sack. But I can envision plenty of 100% valid military applications -- after all, if you're going to blow up a million-dollar cruise missile, why not give it a thousand-dollar configuration panel?
Ideally, of course, the military money helps get the screen into the production levels required for the consumer market. Extend the lifespan to six months and drop the cost to under $60 bucks, and people will pay $10/month for disposable e-books.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I was just thinking of something (I know, scary isn't it). These things will probably be priced reasonably in a short period of time and as Phillips likely hopes will one day replace a good chunck of print media.
What about disposal? It is likely that if they are priced reasonably enough they may become just as disposable as newspaper (all right, not quite so bad) but even if only one in ten people disposed of these things after they became damaged (look how we treat our newspapers and tell me these things won't be piling up in the dump) how are we supposed to get rid of them? They likely contain a fair amount of material that is not decomposable within a reasonable amount of time. We already know that computers are adding quite a bulge to the normal waste, how would seveal million sheets of this stuff hold up (quite well I'm guessing, probably 100,000 - 500,000 years!)
This is of course only my perspective but it does give reason to pause.
yeah, because newspapers don't have ANY annoying advertisements...
[/sarcasm]
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This display tech would make a great wrist-wrapping PDA gauntlet. Rather than have to hand-hold the PDA/cellphone/MP3/video player beastie, an arm-conforming design would enable handsfree display. The only decision is whether to wear the display on the top of the forearm (risking damage to the display) or wearing it on the inside of the forearm (which seems a little less comfortable).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If you read Harry Potter books, you know that pictures in magic world can move. I'd really like to see something like this in real newspapers using these "electronic paper" displays. Imagine the Sports section :-)
I've wanted to build a custom portable computer into a staff/walking stick for a while. This would be perfect for the display. A 2 inch curve is about right to wrap around the top of a staff, particularly if it is widened to about a 5 inch circumference at the top.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Much like many newspapers
ah, but how many newspapers are 5" in diameter?
2 1337 4 u!
The article did mention that the material has a 2cm bend radius, so it still might have a problem if it gets crushed.
Firstly they are making it enough volumes to attract others to build applications that need it, but not enough to generate any real money...But have plans for mass manufacturing plant with 12 to 24 month period from now, but they are seeking funding to build it, which means they have to show SOMETHING, with future potential. They are doing active research, meanwhile which means that they can make it bigger, last longer ,cheaper, and have better resolution, they just don't know yet which of those are going to improve and how much in the period before mass production. The first generation product is probably usably mainly as prototype design and perhaps some rare cases, where cost is not such a problem...
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
As a military member who suffers from military planners I can assure you we would rather have paper maps.
Without the map you are dead meat. With anything electronic I have to depend upon power, end of statment.
Yes we use technology. Yes it helps us. But when it counts, I want my compass and a map (and that tactical overlay).
If they can move the circuitry of an active panel display from glass to flexible plastic, then they should be able to put the processor on the same flex material too. Back in 2002, they put a Z80 processor on glass. That Z80 had only 13,000 transistors and this roll-up display uses 85,000 so the feature count is not out of the question (the biggest hurdle is the transistor count for RAM).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
How about a bumper sticker you can change when you go home for the holidays, go to work, or have a cop trailing you for a possible speeding ticket. The "Evolve" stick ons are cool but just not practical for every situation.
If you could get these things up to a lifespan of a decade, and get them in colour, you could panel a car with them.
You could also get by with pixels that are huge - say, 1 cm diameter, and still get some neat effects, like zebra stripes that move along the car in proportion to your speed.
A moving image on a moving object? Ergonomic nightmare -- that's dynamic camouflage. Guaranteed traffic accident. It'd be banned.
Cool, now you can fly over the battle field and reprogram the enemy's maps...
so why don't they get some of those roll-up solar panels to go with their roll-up screens?
nice thing about solar in the desert... tends to charge batteries rather well.
make a total body suit out of these, and project a rear image forward... ok so it would only work in grey light conditions now, but we're getting there.
tcboo
Remember too that the eInk soulutions will reduce power requirements accross the board...PDAs will use less batteries...and they are sunlite [flashlight?] readable...no battery-sucking backlights. Also, larger sizes will be soon available...far cheaper than LCDs...so you could have 36" x 36" rollable maps INSTEAD of a standard laptop or PDA screen! Remember too, an old-school palm can go almost a month on a pair of AAAs. And soon We'll have chemicaly, replentishable fuel-cells for electronics too...hopefully shipping later this year!
Might it be possible to include electroplastics in the display substrate? Those materials are manufactured in one shape, returning to it after a mechanical deformation (eg. manual pulling). Additionally, a small applied charge deforms them into another "baked-in" shape; more advanced versions have manifold states, addressable by charge. How about a display that's prerolled into a scroll, then rolled again like a string into a disc, in its uncharged form? A 1" disc might snap into a 15" display on powerup, giving new meaning to "quarter VGA".
--
make install -not war
Everybody here seems to be missing the biggest advantage that these have for military uses - realtime display of deployments! Imagine a company lieutenant pulling one of these out of his pack and looking at it. It syncs via wifi to the HQ and he instantly can see where the nearest frienldly armoured unit is, the current target of his backup artillery, and where other units are and whether they are in a position to support him. If every unit carries a GPS unit that automagically radios their position back to HQ, then it would not be infeasible to preoduce data like this on the map.
Obviously, with such a system reliability is going to be the biggest issue. The biggest advantage of these screens then is that they keep there last image even if power is lost. Thus, if there are any problems with the wifi link or power supply, they're still useful as a basic map. The biggest issue then is reduced to durability (i.e. dirt, water, shocks). While admittedly a big issue, the technology has serious potential now.