Retroreflective Floating Display

Mid-air Projection Screen based on Polarized Retroreflective Imaging System

Overview

With the advent of technology in 3D floating displays and hand-tracking sensors, people can directly view and touch 3D objects in mid-air without wearing special devices such as 3D glasses and data gloves. Conventional 3D floating displays, however, suffer from limited viewing angles and visual fatigues due to vergence-accommodation conflict. Recently, one of the solutions to these issues was addressed by aerial imaging by retro-reflection (AIRR) in which reflective sheeting is used to focus images in mid-air space. Conventional AIRR methods have limited its applications due to the low light efficiency, and hence it is difficult to deploy standard LCDs to create visible enough floating images. To improve the light efficiency of AIRR, we proposed a polarized AIRR (pAIRR) method inspired by LCD backlight recycling technique. Utilizing enhanced brightness, we explored a new optical design to create 2.5D displays that provide visible floating images above a tabletop touch screen, which enables users to smoothly interact with both floating digital objects and contents displayed on the touch screen. This research was initiated from my research internship project at Applied Sciences Group in Microsoft Research in Redmond. Furthere improvements of optical designs were investigated at The University of Tokyo and Utsunomiya University in Japan. The project contributed to industry commercializing the research outcome as novel aerial display components and DIY floating display kits.

Research Overview

1 Polarized Aerial Imaging by Retroreflection (pAIRR)

2 42-inch Floating Display Prototype System

3 Spatio Temporally Multiplexed 2.5D Floating Display

4 Holographic Screen based 2.5D Floating Display

5 2.5D LED Floating Display by Transparent Retroreflector

System Demonstration

First Prototype Works

Little Earth

Solar System

Electric Arc

2.5D Sparkling Spellbook

2.5D GUI

2.5D Floating Dragon

Second Prototype Works

42-inch Unity-Chan

42-inch Plasma Ball

2.5D Solar System

Other Fun Works

2.5D Floating LED Display

Floating 3D Object

Floating Image over Water Surface

Main Video

Publications

Paper Yutaka Tokuda, Kenta Onuki, Masashi Takahashi, Sho Onose, Tomoyuki Okamoto, Michitaka Hirose, Hirotsugu Yamamoto. 2015. Aerial Imaging by Retro Reflection with Transparent Retro Reflector (AIRR with TRR). The 22nd International Display Workshops (IDW'15), pp.830--833. https://www.idw.or.jp/15record.html
[Best Paper Award]

Paper Yutaka Tokuda, Atsushi Hiyama, Michitaka Hirose, Tim Large. 2014. Comparison of Material Combinations for Bright and Clear Floating Image by Retro-reflective Re-imaging Technique. The 21st International Display Workshops (IDW'14), pp.818--819. https://www.idw.or.jp/14record.html

Patent Hirotsugu Yamamoto, Yutaka Tokuda, Shusei Ito, Nao Kurokawa. 2018. DISPLAY DEVICE, AND DISPLAY METHOD FOR AERIAL IMAGE. US Patent App. 16/002,592

Patent Karlton Powell, Tim Large, Yutaka Tokuda . 2017. Control of polarization and diffractive artifact resolution in retro-imaging systems. US Patent 9,798,154

Demo Yutaka Tokuda, Atsushi Hiyama, Michitaka Hirose, Hirotsugu Yamamoto. 2015. R2D2 w/ AIRR: real time & real space double-layered display with aerial imaging by retro-reflection. SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 Emerging Technologies (SA'15) https://doi.org/10.1145/2818466.2818484

Selected Press Coverage