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Category: holograms – Page 22

Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art, and science and engineering is often no exception to this. Science fiction certainly provides science types with plenty of inspiration for inventions, including holograms, teleportation, and even sonic screwdrivers.

Star Trek’s all-purpose medical device, the Tricorder, has also inspired a fair few people to recreate its near-magical ability to instantly diagnose a patient. As it happens, the non-profit X-Prize Foundation were so keen to get one invented that they started a global competition to see if any mavericks would succeed.

Rather remarkably, one team has emerged victorious in their endeavor. A family-led team from Pennsylvania, appropriately named Final Frontier Medical Devices, have bagged themselves a sum of $2.5 million, with a second-place prize of $1 million going to the Taiwan-based Dynamical Biomarkers Group.

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Today a little history was made. Verizon and Korean Telecom (KT) unveiled the world’s first live hologram international call service via the companies’ trial 5G networks established in Seoul and in New Jersey, respectively. Our cover graphic shows Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam (left) and KT CEO Hwang Chang-gyu demonstrate a hologram video call on a tablet PC at the KT headquarters in central Seoul Monday.

In the demonstration, a KT employee held a meeting with a Verizon employee in New Jersey who appeared as a hologram image on a monitor in the KT headquarters building.

It was the world’s first successful end-to-end 5G network interworking, according to the two firms. Both 5G trial networks were deployed over a 28 GHz spectrum.

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Stephen Hawking appeared through the marvel of modern technology as a hologram during an event in Hong Kong last week. He had some harsh words regarding our current climate of disregarding experts.

Stephen Hawking is a real wonder to behold. The now 75-year-old astrophysicist was told that he wouldn’t see past his 25th birthday due to his diagnosis of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig’s disease. And, although he is bound to a wheelchair, his mind has wildly surpassed his physical limitations.

Embracing his lack of limitations, Hawking recently appeared as a hologram at an event in Hong Kong last week. During the talk, Hawking fielded questions about exoplanets, black holes, and other topics that firmly fit within his area of expertise. He also made a few enlightening comments about current affairs.

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If you think augmented reality is only fun and games, consider that we’ve already witnessed the first known police action taken against hologram technology. During the summer of 2015, a performance by controversial gangster-rapper, Keith Cozart, was shut down when local police discovered the musician was broadcast as a hologram into a benefit concert in Indiana—close to the border of his home state of Illinois.

Cozart, who goes by the stage name “Chief Keef,” is from a rough neighborhood in Chicago, and has ties to local gangs as well as a criminal record including felony gun charges. His music, which glamorizes a gang lifestyle and violence, has prompted public officials—including Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel—to pressure music festivals to avoid inviting Cozart because they say it poses a “significant public safety risk.”

Due to outstanding warrants for his arrest, Cozart can’t even return to Chicago, and so unable to perform in the area, he took the innovative approach of performing from California, but as a hologram beamed into the Indiana music festival. But even that was too much for police, and the performance was immediately stopped.

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In Brief

  • A new phone concept designed by Philippe Starck and Jerome Olivet is a voice activated, gelatinous, transparent futuristic vision of where smartphones could go.
  • Continuing with the trend of subtracting hardware, the phone contains no screen but will be capable of projecting 3D holograms.

The words gelatinous and smartphone might not seem like they belong in the same sentence together. In fact, they barely belong in the same dictionary together. But the Alo smartphone, an unfinished, unreleased technology, is described as a gelatinous, ergonomically shaped to fit the hand well, voice-activated and controlled smartphone. Designed by Jerome Olivet and Phillippe Starck, this design promises to be the future of smartphone technology.

This phone is unlike any current model, and its most notable feature (that we know of yet) is that it will be able to project holograms. Yes, you read that right. Any messages, photographs, or even movies would be able to be viewed as 3D holograms. And while an entirely voice-controlled smartphone might seem a little bit strange and difficult to use, it is supposedly designed to be remarkably user-friendly.

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The advantage of Daqri’s chip, the company says, is that it can create holograms without the need for complex optics. On a silicon wafer, a tiny grid of tunable crystals is used to control the magnitude and time delay, or phase, of reflected light shined at the surface of the chip from a laser. Software adjusts the crystals to create patterns of interference in the light, resulting in a three-dimensional light field.

In experiments, the team has used the chip to create solid objects by projecting holograms into containers of various light-activated monomers. It can currently make small objects, such as a paper clip, in about five seconds—a process that could take a normal 3D printer several minutes.

A startup called Daqri has technology that can print solid objects faster and also powers a new kind of head-up display.

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