Hows about this for the ultimate in video conferencing technology. A holographic display, putting the person right there in the room with you!
Designed by a company called Teleportec, This technology was emerging way back in 2007, but it seems they have now dissapeared, their website has expired and they haven’t been heard of since.
This looks like the closest thing yet to a real-life holodeck! The Virtusphere is (as the name suggests) a large hollow sphere which sits on a set of computer monitored wheels. This allows the sphere to rotate a complete 360º whilst still allowing the computer to track the movments.
The system looks like it could take some getting used to, but is a step in the right direction. It certainly looks to be a better solution than the Virtual Reality Roller Skates we featured a while back
The system looks like it could take some getting used to, but is a step in the right direction. It certainly looks to be a better solution than the Virtual Reality Roller Skates we featured a while back
Click on this link to go check out some more videos of the Virtusphere in action
It’s premium price-tag of $100,000 is the limiting factor here! Obviously not designed for your average home-consumer. Although we will probably see these sort of machines appearing at amusement parks soon. They are already being used by Russia to help boost tourism by allowing potential visitors to take a ‘virtual’ tour.
If you want to find out more about the VirtuSphere and it’s potential applications then check out the following links
Virtusphere.net - The official website for Virtusphere
Defensetech.org - Informative article on military applications of the VirtuSphere
Seattle PI - News Article on the Virtusphere
CNET : News - News video on the Virtusphere
Following on from our post on Augmented Reality, we’ve found this clip of some new AR software running on the i-mate SP5 Mobile Phone / PDA.
‘A standard, off-the-shelf Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) constitutes a cost-effective and lightweight hardware platform for Augmented Reality (AR). A PDA provides a simple, well-known user interface, and is fully equipped with a touch-screen and camera for providing a video see-through Magic Lens metaphor of interaction’
It just goes to show how far this new technology is progressing….
If you want to find out more then please visit the handheld AR site at http://studierstube.org/handheld_ar
If you’ve never seen or heard of Augmented Reality before, then your in for a treat!
Augmented reality projects 3d objects ove real world enviroment, along with GPS mapping and image recognition, the systems being developed today are extremley advanced.
Check out this video from the Demo 2004 conference showing the latest in augmented reality technology. Since that time several large corporations have used forms of Augmented Reality as part of promotional or advertising campaigns. Large steps forward have also been made in the fields of Strategic War Planning and also in the healthcare industry.
Obviously the objects can only been seen either on a screen, or using special camera mounted 3D glasses, the results are simply stunning, can’t wait to see where this sort of technology goes from here……
The major drawback of virtual reality is it’s limited ability to create real spacial awareness. This limitation is mainly caused by the fact that you have to remain in one spot while using it. But imagine a virtual world you could actually ‘walk’ around, truly Star-Trek-Holodeck-Esque!
A new invention by Iroo Iwata, Hiroshi Tomioka and Hiroaki Yano of the Univertisy of Tsukuba in Japan does just that
It allows you to control the machine by actually walking, using a pair of computer controlled roller boots!
The machine picks up your movements from the boots and in turn controls your position in the virtual enviroment, you can see a quick demo of the unit in action in the video below
Although slow and cumbersome at the moment, things can only get better from here!
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