SIGGRAPH, short for Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques, is a conference whose 2009 entry just finished this past week. A couple of really cool technologies were shown off there, including holograms that can be felt and an augmented reality system that allows virtual interaction with real toys.
The touchable hologram was developed by the Hiroyuki Shinoda group from the University of Tokyo, as part of Takayuki Hoshi’s Ph.D work. It uses an ultrasound generator in tandem with two Wii Remotes for hand tracking in order to generate tactile feedback. The holographic image is produced using a concave mirror. A video demonstrating the technology, with an interactive holographic ball and raindrops that can be felt, as well as the augmented reality material, can be found after the jump.
The augmented reality system, called SCOPE, is a work in progress developed by Frantz Lasorne, a Master’s student at the Nantes Atlantic School of Design. It appears to allow basic turn-based strategy between two players, putting various heavy weapons in the hands of childrens’ toys. The main focus of the augmented reality system is to marry traditional toys with more modern video games, in an effort to keep children interested in movement, physical play, and imagination. The video in the link below shows off the technology, which is admittedly buggy. It features a Lego man wielding an arsenal of weapons, and it concludes with him firing a rocket at a rubber duck.
Augmented Reality Toys.v2 (Work in progress) from Frantz Lasorne on Vimeo.
[via Popular Science (1, 2) and SIGGRAPH (1, 2)]
U r one good writer. Augmented reality and touchable holography, whew. I’ve augmented by this informative writing.
cool