Liquid-based displays are nothing new -- in a
vertical orientation, at least -- but apparently it's a lot more difficult to coax a standing pool of water into forming recognizable shapes and characters. In fact, before coming up with their current design, researchers at Japan's Akishima Laboratories were only able to get poorly-formed letters to pop up once every 15 minutes in their first stab at using waves to "print" on the surface of a specially-built pool. Their second attempt, however -- developed with Professor Shigeru Naito of Osaka University -- addresses both major flaws by using formulas known as Bessel functions to cut the processing time down to between 15 and 30 seconds and form characters with straight lines. The 30-centimeter deep, kiddie pool-sized device employs 50 generators operating in unison to produce cylindrical waves that behave like pixels, giving it the ability to display the entire roman alphabet as well as a number of kanji characters. Eventually this technology could be combined with music and lighting effects to create multimedia attractions at hotels or theme parks, but until they can speed up the letter formation even more (and maybe toss in some video), we don't see any real practical applications here. Readers?
[Via
Pink Tentacle]
posted July 25th 2006 12:45PM
I can definately imagine this in a shopping mall in a nice seating area. People could look over a balcony and read this.
Hmm this is quite interesting. I wonder how long each letter or character will stay formed on the water.
As for practical uses, I believe the attempt at this was far less "trying to get something useful out of this", but rather "Can we defy water?" Kind of a god-complex thing, you know? Mastery over something as unpredictable, shapless, and volatile as water is the stuff of science fiction and fantasy. I think this is more of a "let's just see if it can be done" action.
Personally I dont care if we dont get any every day use out of it, it's pretty damn cool and Im sure I'll be seeing it at Disney World someday. ^_-
LIKE OMG LIKEE OMG LIIKKEEE OMG!! THIS IS LIKEEE TOTALLY COOL I WISH I COULD WRITE THIS IS MY MILK LIKEE OMG OMG OMG COOL NEW WAY TO EAT YOUR COOKIES!! THIS WOULD DEFINITLY BRING ALL THE BOYZ TO MY YARD !!!
My first thought, and excuse the jump to left field, was if this principle could provide a theory to explain crop circles...
/adjusts helmet and runs toward the wall.
It certainly would make it easier to portray the parting of the red sea in the remake :-).
I wonder what you'd get if you did this with a resin that slowly hardened. Would it harden into the letter or scatter the "pixels" into randomness at the moment it turned solid? Depending on the hardening characteristics, I could see potential uses there. Also, how deep can the "pixels" be? If you could make them go all the way to the bottom of a shallow pool, then how cool would it be to make a 6-foot-deep pool and be able to walk to the center in your own bubble of air?
I can't read Japanese but I got the impression that it takes 15-30 seconds to calculate the configuration, it probably only takes moments to set the machine to actually display that configuration. Maybe I'm wrong but I bet you could rapidly switch characters if all the processing was done beforehand and put in some kind of batch.
Thats awesome! :D I want one in my backyard.
You could turn it into an RP machine by using a photopolymer. photopolymers are plastics that harden when exposed to a certain frequency of light. So you get your shape going, then shine your UV LEDs on the whole thing at once and harden it.
Of course, it would only be able to make relatively flat, convex shapes, but it would be fun to try.
I see lots of practical value to this experimentation. The process could be useful to many things including but hardly limited to chemical reaction processes. It can be used to mix things. It can be used to move things about. It can be used of course in entertainment. It is a basic process useful for printing technology. It is a basic process useful for manufacture of all sorts of fibers and such. I am sorry if you cannot see practical use but this is mastery of wave activity that is very important at so many levels that it is very important.
If a standing wave with a specific geometric pattern can be created in water, then theoretically it should also be possible to create standing waves of arbirtary shape in any other medium that exhibits wave-like behavior, such as electro-magnetic fields. It seems conceivable that there might be very useful applications for geometrical shaped electromagnetic standing waves.
hem....speed can be fixed easily. If set up multiple sets and start the sets in order of the character...
If you could control a pool of mercury with enough precision, it may be possible to use this technology in adaptive optics.
Companies can use this to put the CEO's face on small ponds so it can be seen from airplanes. Then the CEO's ego might be sated enough he'd go for $78 million a year instead of $80 million.
Thinking of shock lithotripsy therapy for breaking up kidney stones, could this technique at higher power allow for more precise internal manipulation of the internal organs of the body by a surgeon? Let's say internal surgery without making a cut?
Wow. I thought the way to get floating displays by hitting particles in the air was neat, but I've always been fascinated by water.
[quote]... and the letter that's showing is an english "S." ...[/quote]
*eyeroll*
Would using a heavier liquid perhaps have an effect on the time it takes to settle? Heavier, or thicker? Of course, those would affect the amount of force needed to create the character, but... Anyway, you guys obviously know more than I do... Ads in toilets? Genius.
Looking beyound the obvious, make MEMS generators and use them to pattern the various liquid layers that are needed in chip making. This could remove the need for a mask step for certain processes increasing throughput, and potentally dealing with alignment issues.
In a rapid prototyping context, only harden the raised sections and use that as your layer.
Also, if I remember the wave equations properly, more '3D' shapes are possible by tuning the amplitude, and harmonic content of the waves.
15-30 seconds calculation time sounds about right for what is a really complex calculus and differental equations problem. The speed of waves in water should allow a shape to resolve pretty quick.
They better fine tune this soon; Atrus needs to leave a message for his wife on Myst Island, pronto.
Looks totally bogus. Is everyone trusting pixels?....bad idea.
I assume you have to go to Japan to see demo proof?
illuminating it from underneath with a neon light would make for some wicked advertisments on clouds in the sky at night...
Let's see the gigantic Victorian version: moving iron wave-paddles programmed with cam wheels and driven by steam engines. Choose the cam shapes so it will create a square hole in the ocean. http://amasci.com/hoax.html#duck
Maybe some day it could be used to stop a Tsunami
So Walk with me here... The Human Body is made up mostly of WATER!!! What would you pay for a condensed (future) handheld version of this generator that could make anyone you wished ie. Enemy, Boss, School Principal, (Alright I'll say it... EX-WIFE!) perform the Village People YMCA Dance involuntarily??? I guess at this point in the R&D it's like Einstein and Arkansas... All Relative. Just a thought. -E-
What if the same functions and programming was used with sound? You could send messages to a specific point in the room while everyone else just heard noise.
-Frank Forte