New 3-D Projection System (LA Times)

[P3D <DBrockway@xxxxxxx>]

This ran in my hometown paper today. 


NEW ANGLES ON 3-D IMAGES

LOS ANGELES TIMES

FOR DECADES, researchers have strained their ingenuity to create the
illusion of a 3-D picture by fooling the human eye into perceiving a
two-dimensional scene in high relief. Their efforts have ranged from
old-fashioned stereopticons and throw-away glasses for 3-D movies to
computerized virtual reality goggles and stereo liquid crystal displays.

A Stanford University researcher has developed the first system to project
true three-dimensional color images, allowing people to view the same
full-color animated moving picture from any angle, according to research
made public last week.

The new system, however, is the first to project an actual 3-D image,
experts said.

While still rudimentary, the invention demonstrates a new technique that has
potential applications ranging from medical diagnostic viewers for surgeons,
air traffic-control displays and battlefield management monitors to 3-D
arcade games, cartoons and other entertainment devices.

"We believe that this technique offers a viable approach for presenting
real-time, multidimensional information to a multitude of viewers . . . with
no obstructed viewing regions and no special-viewing eyewear," the
scientists said in a research paper published in Friday's issue of Science.

An Air Force avionics expert familiar with the system was impressed by the
military possibilities for cockpit displays and tracking systems. "I can see
where a commander could look over an entire battlefield in three
dimensions," said Edgar J. Dulin, who has monitored the technology
development for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Guy Marlor, a physicist who has seen a prototype of the innovative display
system, called it the stuff of Star Wars. Marlor, chief scientist at West
End Partners Imaging Inc. in Fremont, Calif., said, "It is obviously in its
early stages. The attractive feature is that it is a genuine 3-D article.
You can walk around the darn thing and see a true 3-D image."

That is unique in the world, he said.

Stanford mechanical engineer Elizabeth Downing, a graduate student who spent
eight years developing the system with borrowed lab space, donated lasers
and after-hours help from engineering colleagues, called it "a crazy idea
that [I thought] probably wouldn't work."

Downing built the device with Lambertus Hesselink of Stanford, Roger
Macfarlane of the IBM Almaden Research Center and John Ralston of SDL Corp.,
a laser developer in San Jose, Calif., that provided the system's
high-powered micro-lasers.

The system uses two computer-controlled infrared lasers to paint its 3-D
pictures within a cube of special laminated glass, in much the same way that
the electron beam from a cathode-ray tube traces a two-dimensional image on
a conventional video screen.

The energy generated at the point where the invisible laser beams intersect
makes a single point of the glass glow with visible light - a precise dot
like a video screen pixel seemingly suspended in space - the researchers
said.

This allows you to address a pixel anywhere inside a three-dimensional
volume and then by scanning rapidly, you can draw three-dimensional images,
Downing said.

The fluorescent glass display utilizes several so-called rare earths that
emit different colors of visible light when struck by the laser beam. By
varying the chemistry of the glass, the designers are able to generate red,
blue and green light in the display, mixing them to create a broader palette
of hues.

In the prototype, the cube that holds the images is about the size of a
sugar cube, and the pictures it contains are simple three-color line
drawings, which serve as test patterns. But its developers said they are
confident they can quickly make the viewing system larger, while making its
supporting electronics smaller.

Currently, the image is a pattern of multicolored squiggles. "I can actually
draw little solid volumes inside my little cubes. They can be stationary or
dynamic.

It makes me think of something out of `The Jetsons,'" Downing said.

The imaging system can run on standard household current, operates at room
temperature and can be viewed under normal lighting conditions.

Downing has formed a company called 3D Technology Laboratories in Mountain
View, Calif., to develop commercial applications. Initial funding came from
the National Science Foundation, the Navy and the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization.

Standing between the developers and any commercial application are several
technical obstacles - ranging from the difficulty in manufacturing the
special rare-earth glass used in the display cube to the
information-processing demands imposed by the enormous amounts of data
needed to create each high-resolution image.

First and foremost it is small; it has to be scaled up, said Ralston at
SDL Corp. The images are also transparent. They can be made into opaque
solids, like most common objects but special computer image processing would
be necessary, he said.

It can probably be done with commercially available technology, he said.

09/10


------------------------------