New 3D technology uses suspended particles – New Technology

Suspended particles are guided to form images and animations. Japanese researchers have developed a new technique for creating three-dimensional images.

In the book of Peter Pan uses the fairy Tinker Bell magically dust to get the siblings Darling to fly to Neverland. Three Japanese scientists from the University of Tokyo, Nagoya Institute of Technology and Sony takes into sound waves to get the particles to float and form images and animations. In both cases, known technology behind the “Pixie Dust” – fairy dust.

Using standing sound waves to get particles that are floating in nothing new. But until now nobody has been able to control hundreds of particles in real time. The researchers Yoichi Ochiai, Takayuki Hoshi and Jun Rekimoto managed the feat by developing a way to control the distribution of the acoustic field. The result is a new 3d technology.

So far the letters and figures created in “screens” from 25 x25 cm to 100 x 100 cm. The particles are moving at a speed of up to 72 cm per second, the spatial resolution (each pixel) is 0.5 mm and the hovering 4.25 mm apart. The density of the material can be up to 7 grams per cubic centimeter.

technology will be presented in detail at the annual computer-graphics conference and Siggraph in Vancouver, Canada, in August and in the upcoming issue of the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (Volume 33, Issue 4).