Intel unveils holographic interactive window

An other great inAVate story. For the original link please click here

Intel wowed CES visitors when its president and CEO, Paul Otellini unveiled an impressive digital signage concept during his keynote speech. The nearly eight foot holographic glass window - with LCD display - utilises Intel Core processors to provide customers with targeted content and encourage them to interact with retailers and friends via a multi-touch, multi-user interface.

Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel unveils a new signage concept during his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Shows in Las Vegas

The computing and communications giant said its prototype device could change the way people interact with digital signage technology in environments such as retail, airports, banks and hotels.

Otellini unveiled the concept against the backdrop of a virtual brick-and-mortar shop setting. He showed how customers would use the multi-touch holographic screen to explore merchandise, find out about promotions, submit feedback on products, read customer reviews, view purchasing histories and share discoveries with friends via social media and mobile phone integration.

Multiple customers can use the window simultaneously to explore augmented reality-enabled maps of each floor of a shop. Retailers can superimpose images such as coupons and sales promotions next to the product visualisations on the glass.

“As stores seek more competitive advantages over online retailers, digital signage has become a valuable technology for dispersing targeted and interactive content to shoppers,” said Joe Jensen, general manager of the Intel Embedded Computing Division. “We therefore designed the Intel Intelligent Digital Signage Concept to show that retailers can engage and interact with consumers in a more personal and compelling manner through new usage models such as augmented reality and interactive product explorations, which in turn could yield an increase in revenue and customer loyalty.”

Advertisers are set to benefit from the use of anonymous video analytics. As a viewer looks at the system screen, the built in camera technology analyses data such as gender and age, audience composition, time-of-day and other criteria, which enable the system to display tailored content and graphics based on estimated demographics. The system anonymously sends audience information to advertisers who can use that information to understand the type of content and messages that are most popular with viewers.

Intel also announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft to develop an open-standards validated platform for digital signage applications.

“With the Windows Embedded and Intel platform, we will provide industries such as the digital signage market with scalable and interoperable solutions that enable applications with rich graphics and interactive capabilities,” said Kevin Dallas, general manager, Windows Embedded business Unit Microsoft. “With this solution we look forward to delivering endless possibilities to the digital signage industry and beyond.”

Touchable Holography .........they managed to get this done

Research in Japan is doing some great stuff. My previous post was on the 3D cubes and now this. Details from their work are below and might be a little technical but just look at the video and you'll be amazed (and beyond). This is simple (to some extend) and very cool.

Recently, mid-air displays are attracting a lot of attention in the fields of digital signage and home TV, and many types of holographic displays have been proposed and developed. Although we can "see" holograhpic images as if they are really floating in front of us, we cannot "touch" them, because they are nothing but light. This project adds tactile feedback to the hovering image in 3D free space. Tactile sensation requires contact with objects, but including a stimulator in the work space dilutes the appearance of holographic images. The Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display solves this problem by producing tactile sensation on a user's hand without any direct contact and without diluting the quality of the holographic projection.




1 Introduction

Mid-air displays which project floating images in free space have
been seen in SF movies for several decades [Rakkolainen 2007].
Recently, they are attracting a lot of attention as promising tech-
nologies in the field of digital signage and home TV, and many
types of holographic displays are proposed and developed. You can
see a virtual object as if it is really hovering in front of you. But
that amazing experience is broken down the moment you reach for
it, because you feel no sensation on your hand.

Our objective is adding tactile feedback to the hovering image in
3D free space. One of the biggest issues is how to provide tactile
sensation. Although tactile sensation needs contact with objects by
nature, the existence of a stimulator in the work space depresses the
appearance of holographic images. Therefore some kind of remote-
controllable tactile sensation is needed. That is achieved by our
original tactile display [Iwamoto et al. 2008]. The following paper
explains the technologies employed for a “Touchable Holography.”

2 Principle

2.1 Holographic Display

We use “Holo [Provision 2009],” a holographic display which pro-
vides floating images from an LCD by utilizing a concave mirror.
The projected images float at 30 cm away from the display surface.
A user can get near to the image and try to touch it. Of course, his
fingers pass through it with no tactile sensation.

2.2 Tactile Display

“Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display [Iwamoto et al. 2008]” is a
tactile display which provides tactile sensation onto the user’s hand.
It utilizes the nonlinear phenomenon of ultrasound; acoustic radia-
tion pressure. When an object interrupts the propagation of ultra-
sound, a pressure field is exerted on the surface of the object. The
acoustic radiation pressure P [Pa] is written as
P = E (1)
where E [J/m3] is the energy density of ultrasound.  [-] is a con-
stant ranging from 1 to 2 depending on the reflection coefficient
at the object surface. The acoustic radiation pressure acts in the
same direction of the ultrasound propagation. That is, roughly say-
ing, the ultrasound “pushes” the object. Eq.(1) suggests that the
spatial distribution of the pressure can be controlled by using wave
field synthesis. When the tactile display radiates the ultrasound, the
users can feel tactile sensation on their bare hands in free space with
no direct contact.

The current version of prototype consists of 324 ultrasound trans-
ducers. The resonant frequency is 40 kHz. The phase delays and
amplitudes of all the transducers are controlled individually to gen-
erate one focal point and move it three-dimensionally. The total output force within the focal region is 1.6 gf. The diameter of the focal point is 20 mm. The prototype produce sufficient vibrations
up to 1 kHz.

2.3 Hand Tracking

While camera-based and marker-less hand tracking systems are
demonstrated these days, we use Wiimote (Nintendo) which has
an infrared (IR) camera for simplicity. A retroreflective marker is
attached on the tip of user’s middle finger. IR LEDs illuminate the
marker and two Wiimotes sense the 3D position of the finger. Ow-
ing to this hand-tracking system, the users can handle the floating
virtual image with their hands.

3 Application

The developed system can render various virtual objects because
not only visual but also tactile sensation is refreshable based on
digital data. It is useful for video games, 3D CADs, and so on. Here
we show an example of demos. Fig. 1 shows a demo in which rain
drops fall from above. When the rain drop hits the user’s palm, he
feels tactile sensation created by the ultrasound. In another demo,
he sees and feels a small virtual creature running on his palm.

Big winners are Obama and Technology

It has without any doubt been the most impressive US elections for a long time (maybe even ever). I guess most people watched the elections on TV and used the internet to keep up to date. This has lead to a huge amount of traffic to the CNN website. 276 millions of page views where there are “only” 35 millions normally. Not that bad. There have been more on 9/11, but the circumstances were definitely more comfortable yesterday. Also the other non-election related websites had many less page views than normally.

When looking at these figures we can assume many people went to the CNN site and I guess many others watched their live election broadcast and here we have seen some great stuff. Besides the perceptive pixel multi touch screen they already had for a while when talking about the elections in the last few weeks (a nice clip about this is shown here but this one is much more fun I think)

Besides this way of presenting CNN is also doing interviews. But instead of the split screen or window TV viewers might typically see during live remote interviews, the Obama spokesperson will be projected as a three-dimensional hologram, making it appear as if he or she is in the Manhattan studio with Blitzer. The network plans to conduct similar holographic interviews with representatives from the McCain campaign in Phoenix.

"Everyone is doing something virtual this election year," says CNN Senior Vice President David Bohrman, the guy who pushed the technology. But Bohrman believes CNN is going where no network has gone before by employing Hollywood-style effects. "Virtual elements in a real set look so much better than a real person in a virtual set," he says.

CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There'll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms.

And CNN is not the only one bringing in new high tech. Let’s look at what the other did:

• Fox News has built three new HD studios for Tuesday night's broadcast so it can make better use of the additional TV real estate with updated county results, comparative numbers from previous elections and poll-closing times. A giant wall with touch-screen technology will provide electoral map results.
  
  "We've been planning for this night for two years," says Jay Wallace, vice president of news editorial product at Fox News.
  
  
• ABC's digital maps make their debut, letting correspondents look at up-to-the-minute votes by county, and compare votes as far back as 1960. Also, a double ticker line at the bottom of TV screens will display current popular and electoral totals for Barack Obama and John McCain. Beneath that will be results for Senate and gubernatorial races, says ABC News Creative Director Hal Aronow-Theil. For HD viewers, ABC is providing more information on the left margin of the TV screen.
  
  
• NBC spent the past year designing two studios that make the most of visual technology. One features intricate exit-polling information that digitally appears on a wall. The other studio lets political director Chuck Todd analyze presidential results by region, state and county. "We finally figured a way around using pie charts," jokes Phil Alongi, executive producer of election night for NBC News and its cable channel, MSNBC.
  
  NBC, too, plans to make use of a bigger HD screen size with detailed results from the presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races. And it has partnered with social-networking giant MySpace on Decision08, an online section that includes video, news feeds and blogs from NBC News.
  
  
• CBS News will analyze national and state exit-poll data, using state-of-the-art technology to display vote-counting and demographic data.
  Touch-screen technology will allow anchor Katie Couric to drill down on state and county results for all races, including propositions. "It is very fast technology using real-time data," says Frank Governale, vice president of operations for CBS News.
  
  
• Comedy Central, a go-to cable channel for political news for many young people, is teaming with a social-networking site. The TV home of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is using the services of Meebo to host chat rooms for users to share their political views.
  Among CNN's other innovations on election night are a virtual Capitol Building used to illustrate the changing balance of power in Congress. But the most promising election winner is the hologram. "Either this is an evolution in the way we do live interviews on television," Bohrman says, "or it's a nice try."
  

Would this be the first step in creating the showcases to bring this into our daily life a bit more? At least one thing is clear. Besides Obama, Touch screen technology is the big winner

What if you combine holograms and Multi Touch

If you combine multi-touch and holographic projection you get some fancy new ways to handle data. Just look at this amazing concept from Obscura

New VisionAire technology from Obscura
Here is the latest. Alright, alright, it is not really "multi-touch", because you really dont touch anything. The system just senses where the presenters hands are and allow him to interact. Multiple people could be doing this too.We call it VisionAire. Get it, "vision" and "air" with a little European flair. Basically, we were looking for a new way to allow a presenter to interface with visual data. This uses our standard multi-touch framework and integrates it with the Musion system we have in house. The result is a truly interactive way to give presentations. See for yourself.




An other cool video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgLmd0AgYW8

About obscura:
Obscura Digital is an industry leading digital design and technology marketing agency based in San Francisco. Our focus is to use technology to help our customers extend their brand and message in new ways.