Raw Japan
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3D images you can touch
In Sci-Fi films, there’s one thing you never see people use: a mouse and keyboard. In our 21st century world, technology is supposed to have advanced to where all you need to do is talk to a computer for it to respond.
Well, reality may now be catching up with fantasy as a Tokyo University research team takes the first step towards redefining how we interact with electronic machines.
Taking a page from Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report”, they’ve made 3D holograms that you not only can see, but touch.
Three-dimensional images are nothing new, as anyone who has a credit card will likely have a hologram on the card to prevent forgery, but they’ve been no more than optical tricks up to this point.
“Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you tried to touch it, your hand would go right through, but now we have a technology that adds the sensation of touch,” Hiroyuki Shinoda, a professor at Tokyo University and one of the developers of the technology, explained when asked about the invention.
An emitter that delivers localised pressure on a surface matched to where the hologram is projected tricks the brain into thinking the pressure comes from the object that appears to be there.
