Interesting new technology from Mitsubishi Electric, as highlighted on EMT Worldwide.

Mitsubishi Electric has announced that it will demonstrate a new multi-touch (MT) interface for its Seventy Series DLP cubes at ISE 2010. The new interface transforms a standard multi-window display wall into an interactive workspace that can be used by several users simultaneously.

The multi-touch technology, developed jointly in Sweden by Mitsubishi Electric and i3 Sense, uses laser sensors instead of the more usual infra-red (IR) detectors or capacitive touch overlays. As well as offering greater accuracy and responsiveness, the new system is much less susceptible to interference from sources of IR radiation such as sunlight. The technology makes it possible to create reliable multi-touch, multi-user interfaces in normally-lit environments such as control rooms, shop windows, or other public areas.
Mitsubishi has developed a multi-touch option for its Seventy Series DLP cubes that enables the entire display wall to become a single multi-touch interface. Multiple users can interact with the display at the same time, with the software tracking the hand movements of each user from one cube to the next completely seamlessly. Users can change size, orientation and position of any window by simply ‘grabbing’ it or ‘dragging’ the corners to the desired position. The ease with which users can work together and manage multiple sources offers exciting possibilities in applications such as command and control.

Daniel Quitzau of Mitsubishi Electric Sweden commented: "The Multi-Touch option creates a completely new class of user interface called a Natural User Interface (NUI). The strength of NUIs are that they are completely intuitive. The technology removes the need for the operator to have specialist training or to be aware of how the data is being managed. Configuring a display really does become as simple and as intuitive as arranging paper on your desk. Users are becoming much more familiar with touch interfaces through products like the iPhone. Windows 7 ships with native support for multi-touch applications and so it’s likely that we will see rapid growth in the use of multi-touch applications over the next few years. With this technology option now available in our control room displays, Mitsubishi Electric is very much at the forefront of this technology."

The Seventy Series cubes are available in 50in, 60in, 67in and 80in screen sizes in 1024 x 768 pixel and 1400 x 1050 pixel resolutions. All can be supplied with the i3 Sense MT option and it is possible for the system to be retrofitted into existing installations. Seventy Series products have built-in processing and interchangeable input cards to enable sophisticated multi-input display walls to be created without an external processor. For more ambitious projects, Mitsubishi’s VC-X3000 image processor and D-Wall software suite can be used to create powerful turnkey control room solutions.

Thinking outside the box

DLP cubes have been given an interactive facelift with a new laser based multi-touch system from Mitsubishi. The groundbreaking technology is set to make an appearance at ISE 2010 following a successful debut in Sweden at signage show, Sign Scandinavia 2009. Video content shows a demonstration of the technology that, according to Mitsubishi, offers huge advancements in terms of speed and accuracy when compared to traditional IR based touch technology. See a video of the system in action here

Daniel Quitzau, manager of large display and play-out solutions at Mitsubishi Electric Europe, explained the new system is based on sensing technology rather than a touch overlay. “As far as I’m aware,” he continued, “it is the only multi-touch system that uses laser sensors and not IR. Because you are using lasers there are no problems with interference from other light sources, for example sunlight.”
Despite having obvious advantages for use in applications such as shop windows, Quitzau said the technology really comes into its own when used in DLP cubes. “The projector in the DLP cube actually creates IR itself. This means there is a lot of calibration required to create a good system and, even then, it’s not really good enough.”
The system generated keen interest when demonstrated at Sign Scandinavia in Stockholm. Quitzau said Mitsubishi received leads from sectors ranging from industrial to retail.
Currently, the products that are ready for market use back projection screens but Quitzau thinks the interactive DLP cubes will be ready at the beginning of next year. He revealed the company was looking at a possible launch at ISE 2010 when the “final tweaks” had been made. However, whether ISE is used as the launch pad or not, Quitzau did confirm that the technology will definitely be on display at the Amsterdam show.

InAVate – DLP cubes go interactive

From www.diamond-vision.tv 

The world’s first four-sided, centre-hung, stadium video display consists of four Diamond Vision LED video screens, with the two main high-definition sideline displays measuring 22m high by 49m wide, and two Diamond Vision end-zone displays measuring 9m high by 15.5m wide. Weighing 544 tons, the screens are suspended 27.5m feet directly over the centre of the playing surface and stretch from nearly one 20-yard line to the other.

With a total viewing area of over 1,058 square-metres, the Diamond Vision display is equal to around 3,268 52-inch televisions, and is comprised of 10,584,064 individual LEDs.

“This was probably the most exciting project we’ve ever been involved with,” said Mark Foster, general manager of Mitsubishi Electric’s Diamond Vision Systems. “The Dallas Cowboys are one of the most innovative teams in the NFL, and their new stadium reflects that. These scoreboards and displays are the realisation of the Cowboys’ commitment to their fans and the sport. We are very proud that the Cowboys organization turned to Mitsubishi Electric to deliver their vision as part of this incredible project.”

"We’re extremely proud of our world-class Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision screen,” said Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones. “We have designed everything about Cowboys Stadium to provide an unequalled experience for our fans, and this screen is the centrepiece of what we have created for them.”

Mitsubishi Electric has now been recognised by Guinness World Records five times for its accomplishments, and the Cowboys’ board is the fourth Diamond Vision screen to be honoured by Guinness. The first came in August, 2003, for the World’s Longest Video Display at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong. In March 2005, GWR recognized the Diamond Vision LED display at Turner Field in Atlanta as the World’s Largest High-Definition Television Screen, and in September 2005 the Mitsubishi Electric video board at the Japan Racing Association Tokyo Racecourse was certified as the World’s Largest Television Display. In 1993, Mitsubishi Electric was recognised for designing and installing the world’s fastest elevator — capable of travelling at 750 meters per minute — at the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan.

Mitsubishi Electric, the Official Large Outdoor Video Display Provider of the PGA TOUR, was the first company to introduce large-scale video display boards for the 1980 Major League Baseball All-Star game at Dodger Stadium. Since then, Mitsubishi Electric has been recognised as the leader in visually stunning displays for sports facilities, advertising, entertainment and communications. Other installations include the first-of-its-kind high-definition display at Yankee Stadium the first 32:9 ratio HD scoreboard at AT&T Park in San Francisco Times Square’s first HD display at MTV studios traffic-stopping marquees at Bally’s and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas a massive 11-screen display at Times Square in New York City and the largest indoor HD screen in North America, the 10m x 33.5m screen at the Colosseum in Las Vegas.

Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision News

Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a touchable holographic display that allows users to interact with a floating 3-dimensional image. Using a combination of Wii gesture recognition sensors and a ultrasound transmitter, the researchers were able to not only control a holographic object floating in space, but to give the user tactile feedback when they “touch” it.

September 16, 2009

A recent Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum article reveals that organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology may not be the successor to liquid crystal display technology (LCD) after all. New research funded by the Ford Motor Corporation demonstrates the creation, assembly, and connection of inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on a flexible substrate, opening up the possibility for the miniaturization of the technology. Given that inorganic LEDs surpass OLEDs in brightness, energy efficiency, durability, and moisture resistance, printed compound semiconductors may soon be the replacement technology of choice for small, pixel-dense displays.

From the Globalspec Newsletter

As revealed in InAVate

On September 18, when Entertainment Weekly subscribers in Los Angeles and New York open the latest issue of the show business title they will see a CBS advert with a difference. Thanks to Video-in-Print technology, developed by Americhip, the first video advertisement incorporated in a paper magazine is to be published, showing clips of the broadcast network’s upcoming programmes, interspersed with promotional videos for Pepsi.

Los Angeles headquartered Americhip, develops "multi-sensory marketing" and claims it has solutions that communicate with all five senses.

According to technology review site, CNET News, the screen has been under development for about two years. The one to be incorporated in the magazine is 2.7mm thick and has a resolution of 320×240. The battery lasts between 65 to 70 minutes but can be recharged with a mini USB cord via a jack. The screen uses TFT LCD technology and is enforced by protective polycarbonate.

Mini-speakers, incoporated in the screen, provide sound for the product described by Americhip as "the future of advertising".

InAVate – Video ad in printed magazine

From InAVate Magazine

05 August 2009

Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology has unveiled a new handheld, 3D communications tool. The gCubik, developed by the NICT earlier in the year, reproduces 3D images, inside a 10cm-per-side cube, that are viewable without special glasses. Now, the gCubik+i can generate the images in real-time allowing them to be manipulated using touchscreen panels and on-board motion sensors.

All the six faces of the cube display 3D images, allowing users to see the display from every possible direction. By adding special sensors, users can also interact with the inside images.

The gCubik was born out of a drive at NICT to develop 3D technology that does not require 3D glasses. The organisation said: "Our "gCubik", a cubic auto-stereoscopic display, which has been designed as a tool to support communication among multiple users, is a graspable display born from this new concept."

Each face of the display includes a touch panel. Speakers for posture and acceleration are included inside. Therefore, users can have simple interaction with the 3D images displayed. This now makes it possible to develop applications and begin discussions towards using the display as a communication tool.

The Institute hopes that, by allowing users to share 3D images instead of pictures, it can provide a new means for future communications. "We plan to propose a new interaction paradigm, and develop applications, for multi-user collaborative tasks that exploit the concept of ‘Graspable 3D Images’," the Institute said in a statement. "Furthermore, we plan to make the display which is wireless, even more compact and improve its image quality in preparation for commercial applications."

Each face of the display uses integral photography, which is one of the various methods to display 3D images without special glasses (auto-stereoscopic). When viewing a real scene, humans see a different image with each eye, which depends on the distance and the different position of the eyes (binocular parallax). When we move our heads, we see different images (motion parallax). These are some of clues on how humans perceive depth (3D). Integral photography uses a tightly packed micro convex lens array to record distinct ‘elemental’ images, and when these images are again viewed through the same micro-lens array, they reproduce the 3D integrated image of the scene with both binocular and motion parallax. The Institute’s system utilises the electronic integral photography which uses an LCD display, instead of the recorded photograph, to display the elemental images.

Integral photography makes use of the principle that convex lenses are designed so that parallel incoming light rays converge into its focal point. Conversely, all the ray lights coming from a light source at the focal point will come out of the lens as parallel rays in the direction of the line joining the light source with the lens principal point.

By arranging and displaying appropriate elemental images on the LCD pixels corresponding to each lens, each screen of the display functions as a window where different views of the scene can be observed depending of the viewing angle. By using integral photography (IP), horizontal and vertical motion parallax for 3D images can be observed without special glasses.

Besides, auto-stereoscopic displays using lenticular lenses are more widely known than the ones that use integral photography, but they only provide horizontal motion parallax, a subset of the parallax provided by IP.

InAVate – 3D display cube creates images in real-time

From Businessweek

A Japanese company is planning to launch the world’s fastest wireless broadband services using WiMax technology. On June 7, Intel Capital said it plans to invest $43 million in Tokyo-based UQ Communications, which also has financial backing from Japan’s second-largest wireless operator, KDDI.

In recent months, UQ Communications has been building a network of WiMax transmitters in Tokyo and neighbouring cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama and aims to reach 90% of Japan’s population by 2012. Today, UQ and KDDI formally announced plans to start offering WiMax services to businesses from July 1.

The promise of WiMax isn’t that it offers another phone network for voice calls. Rather the network is expected make wireless e-mail and Internet-surfing available from more places. WiMax resembles Wi-Fi but WiMax can reach up to 30 miles compared to Wi-Fi’s far more limited range of a few hundred of feet. That means anyone with a laptop computer or other portable gizmo that comes with WiMax technology can tap into the Net wirelessly over a zippy wireless network without a Wi-Fi router or a cable connection. (Calls made over online telephony outfits such as Skype are possible but it’s still unclear whether UQ and other WiMax service providers will try to steer users to their own packaged services.)

UQ enters Japan’s market for wireless data-transmission services as manufacturers unleash an array of wireless gizmos: everything from touch-screen mobile phones resembling Apple’s iPhone to netbooks which are smaller than laptops but can tap cellular networks to do e-mail and Web searches. UQ Communications applied 18 months ago for a license to offer WiMax services.

The company won’t have the WiMax sector all to itself. Japan’s number one wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo, will begin offering similar services—albeit at much slower speeds than UQ’s–in the coming months. UQ will also have to compete against a crop of other companies known as mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, that lease the major cellular networks to offer tailored data and voice services targeting specific kinds of users.

The first WiMax-enabled gizmos will be laptops. Three manufacturers–Toshiba, Panasonic and Onkyo—showed off laptops today that will run on Intel chips with WiMax capability when UQ’s services start. WiMax download speeds in Japan will be as fast as 40 Mbps, comparable to Wi-Fi connections already in use and faster than broadband Internet connections over a land-based line in most other countries. (Upload speeds are slower at 10 Mbps.)

Besides Intel and KDDI, other big-name supporters are behind UQ: Kyocera, railway operator JR East, Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank and Daiwa Securities. That should help in landing deals with businesses and perhaps even give UQ a chance to test new services in conjunction with JR East, which runs commuter and bullet trains from Tokyo to major Japanese cities.

Intel Helps Shape Japan’s WiMax Future – BusinessWeek

US company Nanolumens claims to be well-advanced in its plans to market a giant portable display system that will be less than one millimetre thick and weigh no more than 45kg.

As reported in InAVate magazine, John Wilson, president of the company said: “Nanolumens has a core technology that permits it to bring the best of display technology to a flexible format. We have a fairly extensive patent portfolio, almost 50 patents issued and filed that cover a very innovative set of technologies that allow us to bring flexibility to display technologies”.

The company has already built a number of prototypes based on the technology but plans to market a very large display within a year. Wilson confirms, “It will be very lightweight and large for markets primarily in out-of-home advertising, digital signage, control room and large format business-to-business applications.”

Wilson continues: “Our view is that much of the industry, particularly in the out-of-home advertising industry, is shifting to digital and there’s a great deal of that market that would be perfectly fine for a 42” or a 50” LCD display that is rigid and just put up on the wall.”

“But, there are an incredible number of applications where either a curved wall or a bend around a column or a very large space that is high up and needs a hanging screen. That is the market we are planning to pursue.”

A startling additional feature of the technology – apparently – is its ability to operate as a portable device. “The fact that it continues to operate and run as it’s transported from place to place because it’s actually a portable device is also significant so we’ve been able to share it with both customers and strategic partners.”

Wilson and CEO of Nanolumens, Richard Cope, have an impressive background between them, having run numerous research and development enterprises. “[Cope] was a programme manager for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency which is one of the premier research agencies in the world,” adds Wilson.

“We view the flexible display world as the start of a new emerging industry.” Wilson concludes. “There are a lot of companies working on the challenges of flexible imaging systems. Some working on small wearable devices or small clothing integrated devices. We chose the large format professional market as we felt was represented higher value and was immediately accessible”

AJ Comments: It may seem too far-fetched to be true, but flexible screen technology as described here is indeed a reality –at least in the lab. It may seem strange that it is a small and hitherto unknown US company that appears to be pioneering this technology as a commercial product, but stranger things have happened and it wouldn’t be the first time that a new technology has burst onto the pro-AV scene from left-field. Watch this space!

InAVate – Flexible screen is less than 1mm thick

As reported on the Projector People blog May 18th 2009

Mitsubishi recently announced a new green initiative in their popular projector line. They outline some of the efforts they are taking to reduce their impact on the environment in an announcement below.

In order to lessen our impact on the environment and conserve natural resources, Mitsubishi Electric is committed to being socially responsible. Over the last few years, we have incorporated numerous environmentally friendly features into our products. In an effort to Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle the finite resources of our planet—the following are some eco-friendly initiatives we have implemented in the design and production of our projectors:

• Energy-efficient, long-life lamps
• Lead free solder on all Printed Circuit Boards
• Our newest models consume less than 1W on standby mode
• Use of recycled paper products for user reference guide and carton box
• Projector cabinets are not painted, and conductive coating is not used
• User manual has been converted from paper to a digital format (CD)
• Compliant with both California and European RoHS standards

Guided by our commitment to make positive contributions to the Earth and its people through
technology and action, we will help bring about a sustainable society through our business activities
by promoting a wide range of distinctive, advanced technologies and proactive, ongoing
actions by our employees. We truly are making changes for the better.

The release also indicated that they are working on a recycling program in the near future. You can expect to see other projector manufacturers following suit – and others those that have been working on green efforts may begin touting their efforts.

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