June 2008 Archives

Digital Dash's RTD

Adding to the list of in-car gadgets that take our concentration off driving, comes news of a multi-touch interface designed to provide drivers with a futuristic digital dashboard. The Digital Dash Reconfigurable Tactile Display (RTD) is said to be the world's first multi-touch interface that incorporates physical controls with a curved display surface.

The system uses a rear projector unit designed by Osram Opto Semiconductors to display images such as audio controls and maps of other indicators, including images that interface with knobs, buttons and faders, on a display/control surface. A CMOS camera detects touch contact, knob rotations and button movement at the display, which eliminates the need for wires and electrical components. The RTD could be used to control functions such as heating, air-conditioning and rear parking cameras.

The visible projected image in the Digital Dash RTD is powered by Osram's Ostar-Projection LED light sources. In addition, Osram's IR Dragon IR emitter floods the display area with IR light, allowing the CMOS camera to sense the position of the controls or the user's touch on the screen.

According to Osram, the display is well-suited for use in automobiles, sound-mixing boards, video editing, industrial, military and home control use and any other control- and image-intensive user interface applications.

"The touch screen market understands the benefits of RTD technology and we are working to bring this next generation of innovation to the market through the advancements in high power and efficient visible and infrared solid state light sources," commented Tom Shottes, president and CEO of Osram Opto Semiconductors. "With Digital Dash's technology, the futuristic screen designs we see in forward-thinking concept displays can now be a reality."

As we may one day find ourselves happily jabbing at images on our dashboard to adjust the radio, air conditioning and navigation system, I can't help but wonder if we will need another gadget to drive the car.

Here at optics.org, we always try our best to get extra information from researchers or companies involved in pioneering work. So when I received a press release entitled "Northrop Grumman-led team awarded contract to develop electronic binoculars that use brain activity to detect threats", my first instinct was to find out what new optical innovations were being proposed.

This didn't exactly turn out according to plan, which happens more often than not when we try to report on work from the defence sector. Here's what I can tell you.

An academic and industrial consortium led by Northrop Grumman Corporation has been awarded a 12-month, $6.7 million, phase one research contract to develop a panoramic day/night optical system that will use human brain activity to detect, analyze and alert foot-soldiers to possible threats. The award is part of DARPA's Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System programme, or CT2WS.

Once successfully developed, the claim is that the intelligent neuro-optical system will provide the wearer with an "unprecedented capability to detect targets of interest at an extremely long range over a wide field of view".

During phase one of the programme, the Northrop Grumman team plans to build a breadboard system and complete a preliminary design for the company's Human-aided Optical Recognition/Notification of Elusive Threats (HORNET) system.

HORNET will use a custom helmet equipped with electro-encephalogram electrodes placed on the scalp to record the user's continuous electrical brain activity. The operator's neural responses to the presence or absence of potential threats will train the system's algorithms.

DARPA has the option to extend the contract for two additional phases to develop the subsystems and final handheld assemblies.

Unfortunately, when I tried to find out what new optics will be developed and how the optics and the wearer's brain activity will be integrated, Northrop Grumman was unable to answer. All I was able to find out is that the system will "operate over a range of 10 km, a field of view of 120 degrees and detect people and vehicles".

Integrating your thoughts with an optical system sounds like an incredibly futuristic idea to me. But watch this space, we'll bring you more information when we can.

Do you have a unique way of walking? Researchers at the S.J College of Engineering in India seem to think so. They believe that we all have our own individual gait that makes us easily recognizable. The group is so convinced by this idea that it has developed a gait recognition system, which it believes could improve security surveillance at airports, military institutions and banks.

The technique uses a camera to capture a key set of frames over a person's complete walk cycle. The sequence could then be compared with a database by airport security to recognize suspects before they even enter the airport concourse. Comparing such data with CCTV footage may also help to track suspect terrorists or criminals who may otherwise be disguising their features or carrying forged documents.

The researchers emphasize that gait recognition has significant advantages over more well-known biometrics, such as fingerprinting and iris scanning in that it is entirely unobtrusive and could be used to identify an individual from a considerable distance. "The ability to identify a possible threat from a distance gives personnel a longer time frame in which to react before a possible suspect becomes a real danger," the researchers say.

The approach works by capturing side view images of a person as they walk. The images are converted into silhouette form and analyzed, together with height measurements and the periodicity of the gait to classify the walk.

So far, the team has carried out initial tests on 20 people walking in a straight line at normal speed and stride, back and forth in front of a video camera. The researchers found that recognition performance of the system was sensitive to changes in viewing angle above ten degrees but was reasonably robust even when the individuals changed walking speed.

The shape of things to come in the computer world will be anything but flat, predicts Roel Vertegaal, a professor from Queen's University, Canada. Thanks to Vertegaal's work on flexible displays at the university's Human Media Laboratory, we could one day see computers integrated into almost any object.

"We want to reduce the computer's stranglehold on cognitive processing by imbedding it and making it work more like the natural environment," said Vertegaal. "It is too much of a technological device now, and we haven't had the means to truly integrate a high-resolution display into artefacts that are curved, flexible and textile, like your coffee mug."

Current work includes developing computers that can take the form of foldable paper allowing users to navigate a document by turning the pages. The group is also developing an interactive computer on a Coke can, which can display video on its surface and respond to touch.

Recent advances in computer technology have allowed inventors to move beyond the rigid, rectangular design of current devices. Developments in touch input technologies now allow for any surface to sense two-handed, multi-finger touch. Advances in flexible displays that use OLEDs to form electronic paper or E-Ink means that displays can be rolled up and put inside a pocket, like regular paper.

Another development, known as Kinetic Organic Interfaces enables computers to adjust their shape according to some computational outcome or through interactions with users. Vertegaal hopes that this will yield 'Claytronic' 3D displays capable of showing pictures as well as physical shapes in 3D.

So perhaps one day we will look back on a time when we used to flick through an ordinary newspaper while sipping coffee from a mug - that is just a mug - and wonder how we ever managed?