Holographic 3D Technology? [From Sci-fi Fantasy to Tech-Reality]
Every Sci-fi fan knows about the 3D virtual imaging in the real world or other similar stuff. You may have some interesting and unanswerable questions in your mind, like
How Tony Stark brought his dad’s entire figure virtually in the real world? How Shuri (Princess of Wakanda) able to invent a car which can be operated remotely with hologram technology? and many more. So, have you ever wondered if those are literally possible?
If so, the answer is “Yes” it is possible. That’s really cool right?
In 1976 Star Wars (media franchise) made use of holograms to display people remotely communicating with each other. This has inspired many commercial film and media industries to recreate the effect for 40 years and also came into picture talking and implementing hologram effects. Now we are talking about make it possible with our lives.
Let us go deeper scientifically😉
What is Hologram?
A method of producing a three-dimensional image of an object by recording on a photographic plate or film the pattern of interference formed by a split laser beam and then illuminating the pattern either with a laser or with ordinary light. The word “holography” is originally derived from the Greek word (holos — whole and grapho — write, means complete record of the image).
Short history of Holograms
The foundations of holography were laid by Dennis Gabor. He was a Hungarian scientist in United Kingdom. A series of paper written by him and between 1948 and 1951. Those includes the notion of storing 3D information as a diffractive interface pattern that can be reconstructed through illumination. However, the further development remained stymied because light sources available at that time were not actually “coherent”.
This barrier overcome in 1960 by N. Bassov and A. Prokhorov, the Russian scientists and Charles Towns, the American scientist. They came up with invention of laser.
In 1962 Emmett Leith and juris Upatnieks of the University of Michigan recognized that holography could be used as a 3D visual medium and the result was the first laser transmission hologram of 3D objects of a toy train and bird.
In 1968 Dr. Stephen A. Benton invented white-light transmission which can be viewed in ordinary white light creating a “rainbow” image with seven different colors which make up white light.
In 1972 Lloyd Cross developed the integral hologram. This is achieved by combining white-light transmission holography with conventional cinematography to produce moving 3-Dimentional images.
For cinematic purpose Victor Komar and his colleagues at NIFKI IN Russia, developed a prototype for projected holographic movie for which the images were recorded with pulsed holographic camera. Hence, produced holographic film projected onto a holographic screen which focused out the dimensional image to several points to the audience. That had been a great success in holographic technology.
When holograms meets digital age…
You can see most of holograms in everyday life which are found on passports, credit/debit cards, passbooks, product packaging, and some other government IDs. These are simple holograms which are produced in mass in industries using press machines. These are often useful foe security purposes to recognize product originality.
Holographic printers are also called as holo-printers are the machines developed over the past 15 years by companies such as Zebra Imaging, Geola and Ceres Holographics. The devices which can print digital holograms are Dot-Matrix printer which uses red, green and blue lasers to print tiny holographic dots into the light-sensitive polymer sheet. It takes couple of hours to print page-sized digital hologram with encoding each holopixel with a unique view. So, we can view different images from different angles.
How 3D holograms works?
The 3D holograms can be achieved by holographic projectors. It projects the light and shine special white light or the laser light onto or through holograms. The projected light can produce 2D or 3D images. This can be viewed in different angels and see them in true perspective.
To achieve these processes, we need some important attributes:
Imaging — The projector shines lasers or pure white light through a digital display that is programmed with interference patterns to a series of respective images. This creates an image by passing the light through interference pattern.
Projection — Unlike traditional projectors holographic projectors generate the image by refraction through the interference pattern, losing hardly any light, and operating much more efficiently.
Color — Digital holographic interface pattern works only with one color. To obtain colored holograms, the holographic projectors can be used with colored lasers. But we can say that still it is development stage.
True 3D — Even though we have all the above features it projects image which is still flat. To create a true 3-D image, a holographic projector can use a spinning mirror to reflect the image to the observer in all different directions. So that it will appear like 3-dimensional image floating in space.
Using femtosecond lasers images can be obtained in 3D, with resolutions up to 200,000 dots per second
Fields of uses:
· Medical imaging
· Military terrain visualization
· Architecture and scientific data presentation
· Education and simulation training
· Trade fairs
· Museums
· Exhibitions
· POS presentations and more
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I have a short interesting news for you!!
On October 30th of 2020 Kim Kardashian West tweeted that she was surprised by her husband Kanye with a hologram of her late father Robert. Of course, that gone viral.
She called it as “The most thoughtful gift of a lifetime”. Check out the embeded video below.
Thank you for reading!!
You have still more to learn. Don’t stop surfing internet. Keep learning!!!