Gearfuse

Industrial design students at Victoria University presented innovative prototypes. The project was to design and make an eco-friendly three-dimensional printer in four weeks with a limited budget.

Some crazy designs came out of the printers created but my favorite is the “Equinox”, pictured above. It focuses the power of the sun to selectively dry layers of recycled paint which in turn builds up fluid forms. It also happens to be the sweetest looking gyro I’ve ever seen.

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Holographic images are no longer exclusive to science fiction films thanks to the ICT Graphics Lab at USC.  Three-Dimensional displays have proven to be quite difficult to emulate, suffering from problems such as small viewing areas and high costs.  Using spinning mirrors, high-speed DLP projections and very precise mathematics, the crew at USC are able to display nearly 5,000 individual images reflected every second which come together to create a real-space three-dimensional object. In this case, they’ve displayed a Star Wars imperial tie-fighter.

They’ve also created a formula that renders specific projections at different heights and traces each projected beam back to the display. This way, the projection always finds the correct position of the viewer. So regardless of where you’re standing, the tie-fighter will always be a tie-fighter.  This is a huge breakthrough in three-dimensional holographs that could eventually lead to Cortana-like women everywhere.

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This DIY project from Matt Denton is a six-legged robot that’s able to crawl onto a malleable surface and begin cutting images into it. Though the original design called for a basic pen for drawing, the robot’s now equipped with a cutting tool able to mill three-dimensional surfaces into high density foam.  It takes nearly 30 minutes to complete the sculpting and for not bolting down the work surface, I’d say the robot is damn accurate.

No way in hell would I ever want to go up against an army of these drilling machines, though. I’ll take my chances with Lisa.
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In yesteryear, we’d be playing Rad Racer with those chunky black glasses with the blue and red lenses thinking all along, “Wow this is real 3-D! The cars just jump out at me, man!” However, this is not the case. The company Holografika has created “HoloVizio” technology which provides multiple viewers with a three-dimensional display that changes as people shift their perspective of the screen.

Holografika claims that most of the three-dimensional gizmos on the market are not true 3-D as they do not meet the following criteria:

• No glasses needed, the 3D image can be seen with unassisted naked eye
• Viewers can walk around the screen in a wide field of view seeing the objects and shadows moving continuously as in the normal perspective. It is even possible to look behind the objects, hidden details appear, while others disappear (motion parallax)
• Unlimited number of viewers can see simultaneously the same 3D scene on the screen, with the possibility of seeing different details
• Objects appear behind or even in front of the screen like on holograms
• No positioning or head tracking applied
• Spatial points are addressed individually

The HoloVizio does not try to fool the brain into thinking it’s seeing a three-dimensional image, but rather attempts to recreate the properties of a window, a two-dimensional surface that displays shifts in perspective and changes in light pattern. With this technology in your household, watching “Brazil” just got a heck of a lot more interesting.
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Japanese researchers have devised a prototype that renders 3D images by using pictures taken by 64 cameras placed on an 8 x 8 grid. The 3D display is comprised of a small assortment of shapes and colors.  The images taken by the cameras look three-dimensional to the naked eye and researchers say it’s, “almost real time.”

By taking 60 angled shots from 60 different directions using the camera grid, the rendering system is able to display images of objects and adjust the 3D effect accordingly.  Devices like these serve a lot of potential, but at a price tag of $5000, this 3D rendering system is far from commercialized.
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