Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have created a method to produce 3D full-color holographic images using smartphone screens instead of lasers. This innovative technique, with additional advancements, holds the potential for augmented or virtual reality displays.

Whether augmented and virtual reality displays are being used for gaming, education, or other applications, incorporating 3D displays can create a more realistic and interactive user experience.

“Although holography techniques can create a very real-looking 3D representation of objects, traditional approaches aren’t practical because they rely on laser sources,” said research team leader Ryoichi Horisaki, from The University of Tokyo in Japan. “Lasers emit coherent light that is easy to control, but they make the system complex, expensive, and potentially harmful to the eyes.”

In science fiction, holograms are used for anything from basic communications to advanced military weaponry. In the real world, 3D holographic displays have yet to break through to everyday products and devices. That’s because creating holograms that look real and have significant fidelity requires laser emitters or other advanced pieces of optical equipment. This situation has stymied commercial development, as these components are complex and expensive.

More recently, research scientists were able to create realistic 3D holographic images without lasers by using a white chip-on-board light-emitting diode. Unfortunately, that method required two spatial light modulators to control the wave fronts of the emitted light, adding a prohibitive amount of complexity and cost.

Now, those same scientists say they have created a simpler, more cost-effective way to create realistic-looking 3D holographic displays using only one spatial light modulator and new software algorithms. The result is a simpler and cheaper method for creating holograms that an everyday technology like a smartphone screen can emit.

Researchers have developed a 3D full-color display method that uses a smartphone screen rather than a laser to create holographic images. With further development, the new approach could be useful for augmented or virtual reality displays.

On this day in 1976: Apple was founded.

Apple Inc., originally named Apple Computer, Inc., is a multinational corporation that creates and markets consumer electronics and attendant computer software, and is a digital distributor of media content. Apple’s core product lines are the iPhone smartphone, iPad tablet computer, and the Macintosh personal computer. The company offers its products online and has a chain of retail stores known as Apple Stores. Founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne created Apple Computer Co. on April 1, 1976, to market Wozniak’s Apple I desktop computer,^[2] and Jobs and Wozniak incorporated the company on January 3, 1977,^[3] in Cupertino, California.

A new report warns of potentially major disruption to UK employment from the coming wave of AI. An estimated 11% of tasks are already exposed to current AI, a figure that could rise to 59% during a second wave. But there could also be opportunities for economic growth.

From the discovery and use of fire in the Stone Age, through to the handheld smartphones of today, technology has improved our living standards and is the foundation of modern society. Yet unmanaged technological change comes with risks and disruptions. The current wave of technology including generative AI – described by some as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” – promises transformative benefits, while at the same time bringing potential disruption through its impact on wage inequality, wealth inequality, and job displacement.

Portable AI-powered devices that connect directly to a chatbot without the need for apps or a touchscreen are set to hit the market. Are they the emperor’s new clothes or a gamechanger?

New app for smartphones to detect forgery in documents with the pilot project expected to be deployed in Zurich later this month.

Advances with photoswitches could lead to a smartphone that’s soft and flexible and shaped like a hand so you can wear it as a glove, for example. Or a paper-thin computer screen that you can roll up like a window shade when you’re done using it. Or a TV as thin as wallpaper that you can paste on a wall and hardly know it’s there when you’re not watching it.

Photoswitches, which turn on and off in response to light, can be stitched together to replace the transistors used in electronic devices that control the flow of the electric current.

Commercial silicon transistors are brittle, nontransparent, and typically several microns thick, about the same thickness as a red blood cell. In contrast, photoswitches are one or two nanometers, about 1,000 times thinner. They can also be mounted on graphene, a transparent, flexible material.

The experimental authorization means SpaceX can test its cellular Starlink system statewide in California, Texas, and Hawaii.