Femtosecond lasers create 3D midair plasma displays you can touch (2015)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/femtosecond-lasers-create-3d-midair-plasma-displays-you-can-touch

by jagged-chisel • 2 years ago

284 141 2 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

This technology came up recently in conversation so I searched the web to see what became of it. All I can find are articles dating from summer 2015 and nothing of substance after that.

I’m sure we can all come up with some reasons this wouldn’t be practical in many situations, but the tech seemed promising. Do any of you have knowledge of what happened here? Was it smoke and mirrors? Just really not practical? I would really like to read some details about why this seems to have vanished.

PaulHoule3• 2 years ago

Go into a lab in the first floor of the physics building at my Uni and you are likely to find a femtosecond laser inside which sprawls over an optical bench which takes up most of the room. At the heart of it is a fiber laser that costs about $250,000 but they usually have added a lot of stuff to it.

A femtosecond laser for medical use is about $400,000

https://crstoday.com/articles/2014-sep/pricing-the-laser-cat...

which is one reason you might not see this become widespread.

jandrese• 2 years ago

Ironically that seems promising. This could just be an engineering problem where the only people making the required laser equipment are only making lab/medical grade gear with enormous markups. It's possible someone comes up with a practical to manufacture solid state version that unlocks these displays for the masses.

There is one consideration however where one failure mode for this device includes a situation where the processing locks up and leaves the laser pointed at a single spot continuously, burning a hole and possibly starting a fire.

alt0_• 2 years ago

I'm incredibly curious as to what that even looks like. Where do you study? Can you give us a photo?

zonkerdonker• 2 years ago

Seems like the tech is still likely alive and kicking in the military space: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200041236A1/

US Navy submitted a patent in 2018 for a jet-mounted plasma decoy projector, I'm sure they have many more applications that I wasn't able to find as well

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

the tech is still likely alive and kicking in the military space

I mean, it's a field that burns things that wander into it. I'm genuinely blown away this was considered for a display technology. It's closer to the risk profile of fireworks than an OLED.

traverseda• 2 years ago

Remember all those UFOs people were reporting? That was probably this, military took it over.

chris_va• 2 years ago

Pfft, this is just a bunch of hot air.

... /s

ffhhj• 2 years ago

I remember IO2 Heliodisplay from around 2007. Now their site seems to be dead.

This holographic-style display works by projecting a 2D image onto a cloud of microscopic droplets (probably water, although this isn't confirmed)

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/io2-launches-%E2%...

Nursie• 2 years ago

I followed them for ages, such cool tech for the early 00s when they first publicised it. But it never seemed to have gone anywhere.

They were very cagey at first about the fact it used water vapour because they didn’t want people to think it was just projection onto a vapour screen when they had some sort of directed laser tech. It still needed the water though!

If I were to guess why it didn’t reach any sort of momentum, I reckon they couldn’t control the costs or get the brightness good enough. But that’s really speculation.

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

UFOs

Log_out_• 2 years ago

Now print circuitry mid air and energize..

dmbche• 2 years ago

Very cool!

How energy efficient could it theoretically be? Is it somewhat relatable to touchscreens, or are we talking thousands of times more power per pixel per second?

lainga• 2 years ago

Weren't these things ear-splittingly loud from the constant formation of plasma balls in midair? That's what I recall from a demonstration In The Day

mey• 2 years ago

Looking into the plasma/laser paper and it mentions 77.2 dB at an insanely close 22mm distance. Background was 55.7. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.06668v1 Page 9.

It sounds (hah) like it wouldn't be pleasant if you have your head near a full display in operation, especially since the noise scales with the resolution/brightness. It would be interesting to see how quickly the noise drops off over distance. You are looking at something between a home sound system, vacuum cleaner, or highway traffic at that volume level. Tolerable but not pleasant.

Filligree• 2 years ago

I wonder if it could be modulated to function as a sound system?

tflol• 2 years ago

The researchers found that a pulse duration that minuscule doesn't result in any appreciable skin damage unless the laser is firing at that same spot at one shot per millisecond for a duration of 2,000 milliseconds

Haha so if this thing is misconfigured badly enough it can just melt you

golergka• 2 years ago

How much does an 0-day cost for a device that can literally kill?

kjkjadksj• 2 years ago

Ask an automaker or an airline

vlovich1232• 2 years ago

That’s very awkward wording. Is it saying a 1ms pulse every 2s?

throwaway11460• 2 years ago

I understand it as one pulse (shorter than a ms) each ms for 2 seconds.

itishappy2• 2 years ago

fs pulse duration, 1ms repetition rate, 2s run duration

itishappy2• 2 years ago

It'll engrave you. The spot size is small and the material removal rate is low.

Still not fun, but it's not gonna take a finger.

yreg• 2 years ago

Sounds like a promising topic for an Electroboom video.

King-Aaron• 2 years ago

Still not fun, but it's not gonna take a finger.

It might take your retina though

jpgvm• 2 years ago

There are many display technologies that just didn't make it to mass production.

A favourite of mine is Field Emission Display technology. However they are largely irrelevant now because OLED essentially fill the same role.

worldsayshi3• 2 years ago

Mine is transreflective LCD. I just really want to be able to work with my laptop in the sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d...

Here it's used on the Adam Tablet that never took off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGUKHDBoTEc

Woovie• 2 years ago

LTT just made a video about a modern display that is like this tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0TcGjzKbag

cycomanic• 2 years ago

Hi had an Adam, the idea (and display) was pretty cool, but the build quality and software was not that great. Eink really has taken over that niche though, so not sure I really miss those displays.

tootie• 2 years ago

We played with lenticular displays and they are very good and very safe. But like it's just not that useful to have a 3d display. A 2d screen is perfectly good at conveying the same information.

cyberax3• 2 years ago

I have a slight eye damage in one eye from working with lasers that were just a bit outside the safe limits. And I realized that only years after getting it.

So the last thing I want, is to be near unconfined lasers powerful enough to ionize the air.

CodeArtisan• 2 years ago

How did you realized you had eye damage?

BikiniPrince• 2 years ago

check engine light in the upper left hand corner of his vision.

utensil47782• 2 years ago

Typically you'll notice a persistent black spot in your vision. Particularly if you're looking at a bright field like a blank white page on your monitor.

TrainedMonkey• 2 years ago

Don't know how OP did it, but I've been tested a couple of times at the optometrist by field of view machines*. You concentrate on a central point while the machine shows you a pictogram in a random location with a random timing. You click a button every time you see one.

Note: not an actual name, I don't know how these are called.

cyberax3• 2 years ago

If I look at a straight line with the right eye, I see a "kink" in it. Grids look like they are warped in near the center.

Turns out, that I have a "pinhole" damaged area in the right eye's fovea. It's small enough that the brain can "interpolate" over it, especially when both eyes can see the object.

CamperBob2• 2 years ago

Gee, if only they had thought of this rather obvious point and addressed it in the article.

qwertox2• 2 years ago

I think the same happened to me with LEDs. I have an odd feeling that I can't really see a small section somewhere close to the center of focus, not directly at it. I remember an odd sensation in the eye for days after dealing with a white LED.

fy20• 2 years ago

Are you sure thats not just the blind spot? It's quite big - roughly the size of a rubbish bin lid on the other side of a bedroom.

Here's how to spot it:

Hold you hands together, with thumbs up, at arms length. Close your left eye, and slowly move your right thumb away to the right, while looking at your left thumb. At around 6 inches it will dissapear.

It's kind of hard to notice when my thumb is static, but it's more obvious if I wiggle my thumb while doing it.

elric2• 2 years ago

I have a similar thing. Have had numerous tests for it, and no one (so far) has been able to give me a satisfying explanation. I've gotten used to it, but it freaked me out when I first noticed it.

solardev2• 2 years ago

Warning: Do not touch laser with remaining hand.

m463• 2 years ago

not that one, the other one.

rolandog• 2 years ago

So the last thing I want, is to be near unconfined lasers powerful enough to ionize the air.

I wholeheartedly agree. Just thinking about how the potentially-unregulated cheaply-manufactured knock-off projectors will result in having to wear welding glasses when walking around the street to avoid being blinded by the 3D advertisements that are being shot at your face...

cyanydeez• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, we couldn't even protect the dumbs from staring at a solar eclipse. Safety standards are ridiculously hard to calibrate.

lyu07282• 2 years ago

result in having to wear welding glasses when walking around the street to avoid being blinded by the 3D advertisements that are being shot at your face...

but I'm sure the welding glasses would fit the overall cyberpunk aesthetic of that future very well

colordrops• 2 years ago

This article is 9 years old. Probably went nowhere because of the reason you state.

robertclaus• 2 years ago

Lol, I completely missed this. Thanks for the callout. That WAS right around when everyone was trying to (or started to) use gimmicky volumetric displays at the trade shows I attended.

hi-v-rocknroll• 2 years ago

What sort of work? Industrial processes like cleaning or cutting, or physics/engineering bench firing?

cyberax3• 2 years ago

Physics (well, physics for microbiology), with IR and red lasers. I was pretty diligent with wearing glasses, but apparently not diligent enough.

bawolff2• 2 years ago

However, a nanosecond-scale plasma burst still contains a significant amount of energy; you don’t want to go walking through one of these displays, because it will burn you.

Yeah, i think that answers the headline question. Burning people is bad.

jjk1662• 2 years ago

So will touching a lightbulb, but we have those in abundance in the same application. I don't think that adequately answers the question.

bawolff2• 2 years ago

We don't usually have lightbulbs suspended mid-air at human height without some sort of protective case.

I guess i assume the point here is to have no protective case since the article made such a big deal about touching the display.

twic• 2 years ago

While we're on the subject, what happened to uBeam?

kragen• 2 years ago

same thing that happened to theranos, just in a lower-key fashion; they hadn't figured out how to do the thing they said they'd figured out how to do, and possibly nobody ever will

in my book that makes them a fraud, though there are clearly a lot of ai company founders who disagree

Trevor908• 2 years ago

They collapsed, because they couldn't deliver anything remotely close to what was promised. IMO they knew all along it was a fraud and just kept the story going as long as they could.

I think they renamed themselves "sonic energy". Excellent thread on eevblog:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-ubeam-faq/1900/

Now Perry is pumping some neuro-ai-sleep-aid nonsense.

dotnet00• 2 years ago

Reminds me of the story from a few years ago where the US military was looking into scaring people via screaming balls of plasma, which gave rise to the joke that the CIA was trying to make religious extremists think their god was talking to them using the tech.

https://newstarget.com/2018-04-24-u-s-military-creating-non-...

farkanoid2• 2 years ago

I remember this! I'm glad someone else does too.

farkanoid2• 2 years ago

I often wonder the same about the technology used in a mysterious video that appeared on youtube about 15 years ago titled "Laser Induced Plasma Channel".

It appears to be an area denial weapon that uses femtosecond lasers to guide electric arcs across a hallway (think a metre-long ridiculously straight Taser discharge).

The video had no description and comments on it were never answered - it was recently removed by the uploader, but there seems to be a reupload on DailyMotion[1] from 9 years ago.

[1] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31ovvi

Animats• 2 years ago

See-through displays show up in movies so that the viewer can see the actors' faces. Not because see-through displays are useful.

201984• 2 years ago

(2015)

ErneX• 2 years ago

(2015)

max_• 2 years ago

If you're interested in that project.

Here is an equally cool project form Voxon Photonics. That you can buy today and is also very safe.[0]

[0] https://voxon.co/

jcims• 2 years ago

This page has been around for a while. If you watch the YouTube video, you can see the skin on the person’s finger get burnt as they touch the little tiny plasma balls.

https://youtu.be/AoWi10YVmfE?si=1zzwNba9A1l9Y2ld

vonzepp• 2 years ago

This is quite hard to do safely. Generating air breakdown with IR femto requires a reasonable amount of fluence. They are probably using galvo scanners to shift the beam in xy, but to get the required intensity they have to also shift the focal plane. Given the distances they are projecting away from the car that NA is low meaning they would need a reasonable power. Probably why they are running it at 1kHz. Given its 2015 it is probably a ti-sapphire at 80fs, galvos and an optotune lens. The reason this isn't a thing is that it very hard to make this eye safe.

jagged-chisel2• 2 years ago

This was supposed to be Ask HN but I didn’t realize I was on the wrong page for Ask submissions. So the title was changed to reflect the article. Anyway, my comment asked the question and we got some discussion, so it’s all good.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Until a kid put his face in it for fun

bilsbie• 2 years ago

Whatever happened to the idea of sending electricity through air with this technology?

One application I heard of in the 90s was a long range taser.

ForOldHack• 2 years ago

Que ads.

RIMR• 2 years ago

OP forgot to include it in the title, but this is from (2015).

thesh4d0w• 2 years ago

Worth calling out this article is from 8 years ago.

nirav72• 2 years ago

I’m imagining blade runner style giant holograms above buildings if this tech matures

Cadwhisker• 2 years ago

The video shows slightly burned skin on the tip of his finger where he has been touching the "display".

awinter-py• 2 years ago

the large kind also do this in a sense

alwa• 2 years ago

(2015)

ranger_danger• 2 years ago

You can also use femtosecond lasers and a streak camera to film the speed of light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ys_yKGNFRQ

Maybe one day something like this can be used to have true light-field cameras without microlens arrays (like Lytro had).

karunamurti• 2 years ago

I just want to point out holodeck episode in Star Trek preceded Star Wars by 3 years.

aidenn02• 2 years ago

It was the animated series, if anyone else is like me and could not for the life of themselves remember a holodeck in the original series (Thanks Memory Alpha!).

denton-scratch2• 2 years ago

laser-induced plasma displays that ionize air molecules to create glowing points of light.

The New Scientist used to have a column inside the back page called Daedalus. It usually described some kind of weird or wonderful "invention" that probably wasn't practical. One of them was for street lighting: you'd have pairs of ultraviolet lasers on either side of the street, intersecting in mid-air. The pairs of lasers would have frequencies that were not exactly the same, so that at the point of intersection lower-frequency "beats" would occur. If the frequency of the beats were adjusted to match the excitation energy of (e.g.) O2, the oxygen would emit light.

Another Daedalus "invention" I remember was to use plant tropins to control the growth of wood. You could then grow e.g. an armchair, or a table, or even a house. No glue needed, no saw needed.

I don't know who used to write that column.

elric2• 2 years ago

Controling the growth of wood in that manner is a pretty common fantasy trope, usually of the Elven variety. Or treesinging in Wheel of Time, for example. It's one of those that occasionally pops into my head. Would be pretty neat from a CO2-sequestration point of view, but unless the wood is stressed appropriately during growth, the resulting furniture (or housing) would likely crumble pretty easily.

cess113• 2 years ago

Bending young trees and keeping them in place mechanically to make them grow into interesting or useful shapes is quite viable, probably not to make an armchair but possibly pieces for constructing one, or something simple, like a one-piece walking stick.

berniedurfee• 2 years ago

I was thinking the other day if lab grown wood would be viable, like lab grown meat.

Maybe genetically engineered trees that all grow in nominal dimensions like Minecraft trees.

keepamovin• 2 years ago

That's it, we've got holograms now. So cool!!!! :) Hahaha! :)

jojobas• 2 years ago

Ctrl-F ozone - nothing. Hello cancer my old friend.

mapt• 2 years ago

They're thermally heating up the air with lasers?

Doesn't a white-hot atmospheric plasma emit plenty of hard UV?

Or is this some kind of specific spectral line emission that the photos don't do justice?

ericyd• 2 years ago

it’s not that crazy to look at this project and believe that such a gadget* might not be so far away.

9 years later, I think we can safely say yes, it is crazy to believe that such a gadget might not be so far away.

*quotation was referring to wearable holographic displays made with this tech

pfdietz• 2 years ago

How much NOx would this generate, I wonder.

Femtosecond lasers create 3D midair plasma displays you can touch (2015)

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