ID: 2015-013 Building block for arbitrarily large, room-sized displays, with holographic images coupled to freespace (touchable) haptic fields.
Principal Investigator: Daniel Smalley
The invention is one potential instantiation of a holodeck panel - from popular TV culture. It is a combination of technologies (from Bristol, BYU and MIT) which can provide all 3D cues including kinesthesis or the location of objects in space by touch.
The highly parallel holographic/haptic panel can be tiled to create room-sized holovideo displays with potential for full parallax, video rate color display with holographic images that can be both seen and touched without any assistance from body-mounted apparatus (no glasses, no gloves etc.)
Other attempts to combine holographic and haptic interfaces have not been both holographic and coplanar because one technology obstructs the other. This invention allows them to be both integrated onto the same panel without obstruction. This allows parsimonious scaling and tiling.
About the Market:
This technology could be useful in oil exploration, telepresence, surgical planning, simulation and situational therapy, architecture and design, consumer applications such as gaming and entertainment, and other fields. The holographic displays global market is expected to reach over $3.5 billion in annual sales by 2020, and $1.82 bllion by 2021 in Americas (driven mainly by growth of commercial and medical industry).
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