Touchable holograms

Holograms are cool. But holograms you can actually touch? A team of researchers from The University of Tokyo has created just such a technology.Almost everyone loves holograms. They are a futuristic technology that is rapidly growing and starting to become part of everyday life. The only problem with holograms is that they are like ghosts and there is no physical way to interact with them.

 Recently, the University of Tokyo has recently announced that they have created the world’s first touchable hologram. The system uses an LCD projector that displays the images onto a concave mirror. To give the holograms the ability to touch you, the developers use ultrasonic transducers that act similar to air canons, creating pressure on your hand. Unlike air blasts, the transducers do not taper off the farther you get from the source. By using a camera to monitor your hands positioning the transducers will fire accordingly to give you the feeling that you are holding what is on the screen. The developers are currently displaying this new technology at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans.Holograms are cool. But holograms you can actually touch? A team of researchers from The University of Tokyo has created just such a technology. The tactile hologram, which is being shown-off this week at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans, actually involves two basic pieces: A hologram, which is generated simply by shining an LCD projector onto a concave mirror, and a novel technique which creates ultrasonic waves.The ultrasonic tech was first unveiled by the same team, led by Hiroyuki Shinoda at The University of Tokyo, at last year's SIGGRAPH conference. It uses low-energy ultrasound to create "pressure fields"--which feel akin to a blast of pressurized air. But unlike an air jet, which trails off as you get further from the source, the ultrasound waves can take on closed, localized shapes. Thus, an array of ultrasound transducers can even simulate the shape of a 3-D object:Even if you've never heard of SIGGRAPH, you know some of the inventions that were first unveiled there (ever heard of the clickable graphic icon?). As always, this year includes a slew of amazing developments, and Tech Review has gathered five of them in this excellent post, including an augmented-reality display that lets you (virtually) redesign old toys; and a microphone device that can turn walls and tables into computer interfaces, using your fingernail as the stylus.