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The Future of Communication: Star Wars Style

William Leong |
October 17, 2010 | 10:58 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

At the National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenges National Summit at the University of Southern California earlier this month, pioneering engineers shared projects geared at solving fourteen challenges spread across four major categories: sustainability, vulnerability, health and joy of living.

Among the speakers was a man contributing to the formation of the future, Paul Debevec, computer graphics researcher at USC.

Debevec presented the development of 3D holograms for communication, similar in looks to those seen in the Star Wars movies. To further describe this amazing 3D teleconferencing technology, Debevec displayed a video of special sensors capturing facial movements of one person while a hologram replicating the movement and image data appeared to people on the other side of the conversation.  The technology, once thought to be strictly science fiction, has finally become tangible to our earthly world.


Although the device may seem breakthrough, technology present behind the system is actually less magical than a moving 3D hologram projected in free-space such as the holodeck seen in Star Trek. The current display design functions by projecting a high-speed video on a rapidly spinning mirror produce the hologram’s three-dimensional effect.  

By spinning at a rate of 900 rotations per minute, the mirrors produce a 30-hertz visual update, meaning the image on the screen refreshes thirty times a second while the projector takes a 24-bit color frame of video and displays each bit sequentially as separate frames. This results in 180 distinct views of the 3D image from 180 degrees.

As for the 3D scanning system necessary for communication, a 90-degree 2D video feed captures the remote participant’s face as a polarized beam splitter creates a reference of the person’s eyes for the camera to follow. A program called OpenCV tracks the movement of the participant’s face based on the 2D feed. These systems work together to create a virtual live feed of the person’s face and its movement.

Not only can this technology be applied to communication, but it also carries potential for application to entertainment systems.  Who knows, it may only be a matter of time until all of us will be viewing movies as 3D holograms projected on spinning mirrors.     

Others on the innovation panel at the summit included: John C. Martin, chairman of biopharmaceutical company Gilead; Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman of the X-prize foundation; and Jeff Wilcox, Vice President of Systems and Software Engineering at Lockheed Martin.

Martin primarily spoke about Gildead’s production of the breakthrough AIDs therapy drug, Tenofovir DF. When orally ingested, this drug inhibits the development of the HIV virus.  He highlighted the importance of lowering the production cost of a product while maintaining its efficiency.

Wilcox lectured on innovation with affordability.  He basically said that engineers should not introduce extra performance or features to a product unless it is completely necessary.  An example he gave of the principle was removing the paint from an aircraft to shave off 800 pounds of unnecessary weight when trying to maximize the speed of the aircraft.

To reach reporter William Leong, click here.



 

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