Holographic displays

[dragon]

kind of cool

When's a screen not a screen? When, err, it's made of thin air we suppose—like this touchscreen, which is constructed from light and ultrasound vibrations alone.

Called HaptoMime, the screen uses uses reflective surfaces to create a holographic display. Then, the presence of someone's hand at the (non-existent) surface is detected using an infrared sensor, which causes ultrasound transducers to beam out high-frequency sound towards your fingertips. The sound causes the sensation of pressure—effectively making it feel like you're touching a real, solid surface.

The holographic images are high enough resolution to read 6 point Times New Roman font, and the video shows that it easily allows someone to play a toy keyboard. The applications are endless, but it seems like a particularly sensible solution for situations where the lack of physical touch would be beneficial—think kitchen, operating theatres ant the like

link

[salm]

This looks pretty cool.
I have a question regarding the ultrasound. I sometimes help my gf with her chemistry phd in her lab and they´ve got an ultrasound basin for treating whatever chemical stuff needs ultrasound treating there. They are usually very strict on pointing out that you shouldn´t put your hands into the ultrasound basin because it can cause gout.
So, are these lab basins just so much stronger or is it the frequency or something that makes this display thingy safe?

[Borgholio]

This looks pretty cool.
I have a question regarding the ultrasound. I sometimes help my gf with her chemistry phd in her lab and they´ve got an ultrasound basin for treating whatever chemical stuff needs ultrasound treating there. They are usually very strict on pointing out that you shouldn´t put your hands into the ultrasound basin because it can cause gout.
So, are these lab basins just so much stronger or is it the frequency or something that makes this display thingy safe?

Probably the frequency and intensity. They have you sit in a bathtub and break up kidney stones using a similar technique...and that doesn't cause gout (that I know of).

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't believe that there is any frequency range of ultrasound that will cause gout. In fact, ultrasound is one of the primary methods of diagnosing gout (and has been proposed as a possible treatment). It's not even clear to me how ultrasound would cause a uric acid build-up in the first place. Ultrasound at pretty high frequencies and intensities is regularly used for innumerable health related tasks and aren't at all considered unsafe or risky for an adult. There is some evidence that intense or focused ultrasound can be detrimental for fetal development, but considering how many otherwise safe things fall in the "bad for fetus" category that's a pretty low bar.

Certainly, it is possible for ultrasound at high enough intensities to damage tissue. It heats tissue if it is focused on it for longer than a couple of minutes in some cases. But I have never heard, and cannot fid now through a cursory search, any evidence that there is an association between ultrasound and gout. So... either your girlfriend is misinformed, or she is further ahead of the curve than the New England Journal of Medicine.

[salm]

So... either your girlfriend is misinformed, or she is further ahead of the curve than the New England Journal of Medicine.

I don´t know. I took it from scientists working with this machine so I took it at face value. I can´t find anything online about it either. Perhaps it´s just the company that sold the machine who want to cover their asses.
Hopefully that is the case. A haptic device like this sounds very interesting.

[His Divine Shadow]

It's not the same situation but I've also heard of the don't ever put your fingers in the ultrasonic cleaners thing, usually in relation to the ones made for home use or small industrial ones, they're popular for people who reload ammunition to clean used casings and all other sort of things. IIRC then it was something about the bones.

[Korvan]

I don't know about gout, but those ultrasonic baths can create minute hot spots that are ridiculously hot (something like 3000 C). I'll sometimes hold a glass vial in the bath in order to help something dissolve and every-so often I'll feel something that's like a burst of red hot needles in my fingers. The actual amount of heat is negligible so there's no actual burn, but still enough to get the pain receptors firing.

[Zixinus]

An interesting setup and I really like that they addressed one of the big problems with touchscreen-like controls: you have only indirect visual feedback as to what you have done. This would make holographic controls much more practical.

[General Zod]

Pretty cool, though the haptic feedback via ultrasound is pretty much the only piece of novel technology. The display looks like a fancy pepper's ghost box with some Kinect sensors built in.