Awesome videos of the day

[andrewducker]

True 3D display using lasers projecting into thin air:

Watching this made Julie want a tiny hippo:

And nothing will stop you snoring faster than a creepy robot bear fondling your face:

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Very interesting.

In 1990, as chemistry students, I and a friend worked on ideas about 3D displays. There was a competition/grant thing we could apply for that'd pay us a wage and the materials to work on a cool project of our devising over the summer. We wanted to use lasers to make a 3D display. We did briefly consider doing it in the air (because that would be awesome). But when we did some sums about the energies involved we quickly decided that would be insanely hazardous so we ruled it out. (I predict it'll be a while before you can get their system to work in air that people might be in.) So we decided to develop something that'd work in the solid or liquid phase, that would focus on creating individual voxels one by one (although we didn't know the word voxel at the time). If we couldn't get a live-updating display working in the time available, we could at least shoot for something that would do a once-off solid 3D display, which would still be moderately cool, we thought.

We discussed it at length with our lecturers. Every single one of them insisted that such a thing was not just too difficult or challenging a project for us, but actually physically impossible. They had slightly different arguments, but most of them boiled down to a laser beam being identical in physical and chemical effects along its length. Our counterarguments - that it is perfectly possible to focus a laser beam and/or turn it off and on fairly quickly, and that it is perfectly possible to cross two laser beams (which might even use light at different frequencies) - were dismissed.

Given that the people we'd talked to included the judges of the competition, we didn't in the end even submit an application.

We also considered trying to set up a small business to do it, but it was way too speculative at that point for anyone to give us money, and we both thought completing our degree was a better plan.

So since then I've taken an interest in 3D displays as they've developed. They are utterly awesome things anyway. But given my background, I get a particular vindicatory kick from seeing the spread of 3D printing, and now this.

[andrewducker]

Wow, thanks, that was fascinating. It's a shame you didn't get it off the ground yourself, but I'm glad that someone is making it work!

I can't believe that the judges thought it was impossible.