The Amp Hour #147 – Absorptive Augmented Actuality

[psycho0815]

I want that thing!
I can already see myself, glueing that retroreflecting stuff to game cards and build my own sabacc game.
Any other cool ideas?

Cheers,
Psycho

[jquest]

Great Show.  But what I don't understand is how they'll produce this at $200 when it requires two pico projectors.  Also how do they focus the projections as they are not projected onto surface at a constant distance? I'd think that they blur at various distances on the retroflective surface. 

http://ict.usc.edu/pubs/Augmented%20Reality%20using%20Personal%20Projection%20and%20Retroflection.pdf

[ddavidebor]

A very long show, but wery interesting and definetly not boring.

Dave, if you invite some more EE girls and women in the amphour and more inportant in the eevblog episodes you'll get a looooot more viewers.

My mother says you're a great piece of "gnocco", but some "gnocca" is never a bad thing in such a nerdy show! XD

(*o=male, *a=female)

[mikeselectricstuff]

Great Show.  But what I don't understand is how they'll produce this at $200 when it requires two pico projectors.  Also how do they focus the projections as they are not projected onto surface at a constant distance? I'd think that they blur at various distances on the retroflective surface. 

http://ict.usc.edu/pubs/Augmented%20Reality%20using%20Personal%20Projection%20and%20Retroflection.pdf

I think the LCOS based picos are significantly cheaper than DLP. Also the use of the retroreflector allows much lower LED powers, which may allow for simpler optics.

[DerekZahn]

Great interview!

a couple other references for anybody really interested in this stuff...

http://www.creol.ucf.edu/Research/Publications/1357.pdf
http://eis.comp.lancs.ac.uk/workshops/ubiproject2010/pdf/bolas_ubiprojection2010.pdf

i think it's a perfectly-sized project for a small team to make a cool and (hopefully) successful product on their own... not so easy as to be unremarkable but not so hard as to be impractical.   Very cool stuff!

i was surprised that she was so wiling to basically give the entire product design in the interview; it certainly made it interesting!  I'm not clear on the projector focusing issue though....

i bet the retroreflector is some version of 3M Scotchlite...