In the not too distant future smartphones will get a new feature that means you are no longer confined to the limits of the 3 to 4-inch display your handset ships with. Instead, projector modules will be embedded in the phone and allow you to switch the display to a much larger projected version.
In order for that to happen, projectors need to get a lot smaller. In the meantime, the smallest projectors you can get are called pico projectors. They are about the size of a smartphone and allow displays as big as 60-inches to be projected on a surface.
For the most part pico projectors have quite limited functionality beyond serving up a large projected image. A research team at the German institution Technische Universitat Darmstadt aim to change that with a pico projector called the LightBeam.
The idea of the LightBeam is to make little projectors more intelligent by taking into account other objects they can see using a webcam. So rather than just projecting a large display on a surface, LightBeam can see when a surface is being held in front of it and adjust the projection (size and resolution) to fit on it, rotate and pan the projection as the surface rotates or moves within reason, or even stop projection when that surface is removed from sight.
The other object interaction doesn’t stop with the actual projection, though. Say you’ve got an image slideshow loaded up and want to flick through the images. Rather than fumbling for the buttons on the projector, the LightBeam allows you to rotate an object within its view to carry out the same function. For example, a soda can could be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise to go back or forwards through a gallery.
LightBeam is just an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t, but it does demonstrate that we can decouple control of what we are viewing from the device projecting the image. If that functionality could work with hand gestures as well as objects, it certainly makes for a very simple and use-anywhere interface.
More at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt