Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Wendy J Plesniak

Stephen A Benton

Ravikanth Pappu

Michael Halle

The invention provides systems and methods for generating and displaying computational holographic stereograms having a hologram surface and a spatially distinct image surface. A three-dimensional object or scene is captured or synthesized as a stack of views. The holographic stereogram is computed by obtaining a diffractive fringe vector e and a pixel slice v through the stack of views, and generating the holopixel representation f=ev. The holographic stereogram is displayed using one or more image surfaces that are spatially distinct from the hologram surface. the surfaces can be any two-dimensional structures defined on a three-dimensional space, including, but not limited to planar, cylindrical, spherical, or other surfaces. The holographic stereograms are adjustable through variations in an image surface depth, an image surface resolution, a number of image surfaces, and a scene parallax resolution.

Reconfigurable image surface holograms

A user is able to interact with and modify an electronic holographic image using a force-feedback (or haptic) device, which is capable of sensing and reporting the 3D position of its hand-held stylus and &ldquo;displaying&rdquo; appropriate forces to the user. Thus, a user can feel and modify specified shapes in the haptic workspace. The haptic workspace is precisely registered with the free-standing, spatial image displayed by a holographic video (holovideo) system. In the coincident visuo-haptic workspace, a user can see, feel, and interact with synthetic objects that exhibit many of the properties one expects of real ones, and the spatial display enables synthetic objects to become a part of the user's manipulatory space.

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Wendy J Plesniak