ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: STANFORD, CALIF.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
A Stanford University researcher has developed the first system to project true three-dimensional color images, allowing people to view the same full-color animated moving picture from any angle, according to research made public Thursday.
For decades, researchers have strained their ingenuity to create the illusion of a 3-D picture by fooling the human eye into perceiving a two-dimensional scene in high relief. Their efforts have ranged from old-fashioned stereopticons and throw-away glasses for 3-D movies to computerized virtual reality goggles and stereo liquid crystal displays.
The new system, however, is the first to project an actual 3-D image, experts said.
While still rudimentary, the invention demonstrates a new technique that has potential applications ranging from medical diagnostic viewers for surgeons, air-traffic control displays and battlefield management monitors to 3-D arcade games, cartoons and other entertainment devices.
``We believe that this technique offers a viable approach for presenting real-time, multidimensional information to a multitude of viewers with no obstructed viewing regions and no special viewing eye wear,'' the scientists said in a research paper published in today's issue of Science.
An Air Force avionics expert familiar with the system was impressed by the military possibilities for cockpit displays and tracking systems. ``I can see where a commander could look over an entire battlefield in three-dimensions,'' said Edgar J. Dulin, who has monitored the technology development for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Guy Marlor, a physicist who has seen a prototype of the innovative display system called it ``the stuff of Star Wars.'' Marlor, chief scientist at West End Partners Imaging Inc. in Fremont, Calif., said, ``It is obviously in its early stages. The attractive feature is that it is a genuine 3-D article. You can walk around the darn thing and see a true 3-D image.
Stanford mechanical engineer Elizabeth Downing, a graduate student who spent eight years developing the system with borrowed lab space, donated lasers and after-hours help from engineering colleagues, called it ``a crazy idea that probably wouldn't work.''
Downing built the device with Lambertus Hesselink of Stanford, Roger Macfarlane of the IBM Almaden Research Center and John Ralston of SDL Corp., a laser developer in San Jose, Calif., that provided the system's high-powered micro-lasers.
The system uses two computer-controlled infrared lasers to paint its 3-D pictures within a cube of special laminated glass, in much the same way that the electron beam from a cathode-ray tube traces a two-dimensional image on a conventional video screen.
The energy generated at the point where the invisible laser beams intersect makes a single point of the glass glow with visible light - a precise dot like a video screen pixel seemingly suspended in space - the researchers said.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB