Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2021

No longer relegated to science fiction, holodeck-style creations from Silicon Valley company Light Field Lab are here today.

Continue reading “Holograms get real: Startup creates objects out of light and thin air” »

Swave Photonics has designed holographic chips on a proprietary diffractive optics technology to “bring the metaverse to life.”

Can virtual reality become indistinguishable from actual reality? Swave Photonics, a spinoff of Imec and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has designed holographic chips on a proprietary diffractive optics technology to “bring the metaverse to life.” The Leuven, Belgium–based startup has raised €7 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its multi-patented Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) technology.

“Our vision is to empower people to visualize the impossible, collaborate, and accomplish more,” Théodore Marescaux, CEO and founder of Swave Photonics, told EE Times Europe. “With our HXR technology, we want to make that extended reality practically indistinguishable from the real world.”

Continue reading “Swave Photonics Sees Holograms Getting Real” »

Researchers have come up with a new and improved way to levitate objects using sound waves alone, an impressive feat of mixed-reality technology that could pave the way for some seriously futuristic hologram-like displays.

As seen in a new video, the researchers were able to levitate individual polystyrene beads and water particles inside a special enclosure, making them move in three dimensions by adjusting the output of hundreds of small speakers, set up in a grid.

Continue reading “Scientists Are Getting Better and Better at Levitating Objects With Sound Waves” »

In forthcoming years, everyone will get to observe how beautifully Metaverse will evolve towards immersive experiences in hyperreal virtual environments filled with avatars that look and sound exactly like us. Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash describes a vast world full of amusement parks, houses, entertainment complexes, and worlds within themselves all connected by a virtual street tens of thousands of miles long. For those who are still not familiar with the metaverse, it is a virtual world in which users can put on virtual reality goggles and navigate a stylized version of themselves, known as an avatar, via virtual workplaces, and entertainment venues, and other activities. The metaverse will be an immersive version of the internet with interactive features using different technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 3D graphics, 5G, hologram, NFT, blockchain, haptic sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI). To scale personalized content experiences to billions of people, one potential answer is generative AI, the process of using AI algorithms on existing data to create new content.

In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In computer graphics, it is commonly used to create textures and 3D models.

The algorithmic difficulty is typically seen in Diablo-style RPGs and some roguelikes which use instancing of in-game entities to create randomized items. Less frequently it can be used to determine the relative difficulty of hand-designed content to be subsequently placed procedurally, as can be seen with the monster design in Unangband. For example, the designer can rapidly create content, but leaves it up to the game to determine how challenging that content is to overcome, and consequently where in the procedurally generated environment this content will appear. Notably, the Touhou series of bullet hell shooters use algorithmic difficulty. Though the users are only allowed to choose certain difficulty values, several community mods enable ramping the difficulty beyond the offered values.

Circa 2021

Holograms aren’t new, but a desktop machine that spits them out could be available soon, presuming LitiHolo’s Kickstarter pans out. The machine will have a $1600 retail price and fits in a two-foot square. It can generate 4×5 inch holograms with 1mm hogels (the holo equivalent of a pixel).

Continue reading “A Different Kind Of 3D Printer: Desktop Holograms” »

Circa 2014

For most of us, even one bite of chocolate is enough to send our taste buds into ecstasy. Now, scientists have concocted a process to make these dark, dulcet morsels look as decadent as they taste.

Switzerland-based company Morphotonix has given traditional Swiss chocolate-making a colorful twist: It’s devised a method to imprint shiny holograms onto the sweet surfaces — sans harmful additives. Which means when you tilt the goodies from side to side, rainbow stars and swirly patterns on the chocolate’s surface dance and shimmer in the light.

Continue reading “Holographic Chocolates Look As Beautiful As They Taste” »

Quanta of light—photons—form the basis of quantum key distribution in modern cryptographic networks. Before the huge potential of quantum technology is fully realized, however, several challenges remain. A solution to one of these has now been found.

In a paper published in the journal Science, teams led by David Novoa, Nicolas Joly and Philip Russell report a breakthrough in frequency up-conversion of single photons, based on a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) filled with hydrogen gas. First a spatio-temporal hologram of molecular vibrations is created in the gas by stimulated Raman scattering. This hologram is then used for highly efficient, correlation-preserving frequency conversion of single photons. The system operates at a pressure-tuneable wavelength, making it potentially interesting for quantum communications, where efficient sources of indistinguishable single-photons are unavailable at wavelengths compatible with existing fiber networks.

The approach combines quantum optics, gas-based nonlinear optics, hollow-core PCF, and the physics of molecular vibrations to form an efficient tool that can operate in any spectral band from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared—an ultra-broad working range inaccessible to existing technologies. The findings may be used to develop fiber-based tools in technologies such as quantum communications, and quantum-enhanced imaging.

The manipulation of electromagnetic waves and information has become an important part of our everyday lives. Intelligent metasurfaces have emerged as smart platforms for automating the control of wave-information-matter interactions without manual intervention. They evolved from engineered composite materials, including metamaterials and metasurfaces. As a society, we have seen significant progress in the development of metamaterials and metasurfaces of various forms and properties.

In a paper published in the journal eLight on May 6, 2022, Professor Tie Jun Cui of Southeast University and Professor Lianlin Li of Peking University led a research team to review intelligent metasurfaces. “Intelligent metasurfaces: Control, Communication and Computing” investigated the development of intelligent metasurfaces with an eye for the future.

This field has refreshed human insights into many fundamental laws. They have unlocked many novel devices and systems, like cloaking, tunneling, and holograms. Conventional structure-alone or passive metasurfaces has moved towards intelligent metasurfaces by integrating algorithms and nonlinear materials (or active devices).

Consciousness defines our existence. It is, in a sense, all we really have, all we really are, The nature of consciousness has been pondered in many ways, in many cultures, for many years. But we still can’t quite fathom it.

Continue reading “Consciousness is the collapse of the wave function” »