Category: Weekly Reports


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Weekly Report 2

Week 2 – (29 Aug – 3 Sep 2010)

At the beginning of this week and over the past weekend, we brainstormed and came up with a series of ideas that we could present to Jim Burke and Brad Michael, at our meeting , on Wednesday. Attached is a list of the ideas we discussed. From all the ideas mentioned in the document, the team really liked the idea of making a live 3Dimentional persistence of vision display,  which could be manipulated in real time using a multi touch screen surrounding it.

Persistence of Vision: Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina. It is the underlying principle by which the eye can see moving images like films, cartoons etc. The easy to make example of the persistence of vision phenomenon is ‘flip books’. If the book is flipped at fast enough speed, the illusion of smooth motion is created.

Some examples of the available persistence of vision display are as follows:

Ideas for building : We as a group had a long discussion on the different ways we could generate persistence of vision. Starting with the idea of generating a 3D model from real 2D data, we think using persistence of vision would be the best way to do that. Here are the two ways in which we thought it is possible.
1. Making a persistence of vision machine using a a vertical slab of LED lights. This think vertical slab will be mounted along on of its longer vertical sides, and will rotate along that axis. The batteries needed to power the LEDs can be placed vertically along the center core. The micro controller needed to control the LEDs will be mounted on the LED board at the bottom. There will be around 3 inches of space at the bottom which will be treated a a crawl space. The circuitry needed to control the LEDs will all go there. The only wire that will come out of the rotating center core will be the wire transferring data to the controllers for the LEDs. The center core will be attached to a motor whose speed can be regulate. We looked into 555 timers to regulate the speed of the motors. We also discussed the possibility of generating electricity using an electromagnet on the inside of the revolving board. In that case, the whole assembly will be rotating, not just the LED board. The generation of electricity will solve our problem of needing to supply power to the LEDs and the controller.

Pros: Most persistence of vision displays have been done with the use of LEDs, so there is more reference material available. As compared to the second method, this method does not need to use any projectors, thus not generating any kind of heat. We will not have to deal with angles of projection resulting in the display not being affected by environmental light at all.

Cons: Since the whole inner assembly is rotating at a high speed, we will need to have connectors that can rotate and transfer information without getting tangled. We are still looking into USB cables which have connectors designed for circular rotation so that the data wires do not get entangled. We are also looking into wireless methods of transferring data. We will also need to research LED programming as none of us have experience in that area.

2. Making a persistence of vision machine using a rotating frosted plexi-glass sheet with a projection on it. In this case, the sheet of glass is mounted vertically. It is held together by wooden/ acrylic circular sheets  on the top and bottom. These two horizontal circular sheets are held in place by a vertical transparent sheet which in nailed to the top sheet as well as the bottom sheet. This vertical sheet runs along the circumference. When seen form the outside, the whole assembly will look like a clear glass/ plastic cylinder with a frosted piece of plastic/ glass, inside it , running the length of its height.These circular sheets have grooves cut into them which hold the frosted piece of glass perfectly in its place. This whole assembly will then be rotated along a center axis. There are two projectors that will be used in the arrangement. These two projectors are placed at right angles to each other. They are mounted at a height above the upper end of the frosted projecting surface.  This whole apparatus is then placed inside another acrylic/ glass cylinder which can be made multi touch.
Pros:In this arrangement, there are no wires that will need to go in to the rotating assembly. The projector will project directly onto the piece of frosted glass. Since there are no wires rotating, this assembly can be made in any shape and size, and gives us more flexibility with the form factor to be built.

Cons:The difficult part here is definitely the computing. The pixels will need to be sliced into vertical slabs of 1 pixel thickness. Getting the correct type of projectors and the correct height for the assembly is crucial. Making two projectors work synchronously with each other as well as with the center rotating screen will need a lot of precision. Mounting the two projectors at perfectly right angles with each other can prove to be difficult.We need to look into tools that will help us achieve different kinds of slices of 3D models.
We also discussed the use of slip rings to make rotating connectors for data transfer. As discussed, both these assemblies would have to go into an outer glass/ plastic case which we want to make into a multi touch. The material for making it into a multi touch will not be available till the end on the year. So we are now looking into other materials or alternatives to making the outer casing a multi touch. We also discussed the possibility of having to use a wireless tablet to interact with the system.

We discussed the idea with Jim and Brad during our meeting on Wednesday, who liked the idea. One of the other ideas from the list that seemed to catch the interest of Jim and Brad was, Way Points with Mediated Reality guidance system which combines GPS with a heads- up display. Taking it from there, the team had a long discussion on how we could achieve it.

Way Points: Waypoints are sets of coordinates that identify a point in physical space. We thought of combining a heads you display like the Vuzix goggles, to a GPS application on a device running Android. We are looking into the different ways in which we can achieve the task at hand. We have researched Android development tools, GPS apps that are available and can be used, Google Maps and tying those in to get GPS data, the different Droid phones that are available and the different Vuzix goggles that are available. For the hardware, we have almost zeroed down on the Motorola Droind X .The reason we chose this phone and not any other is because this phone has a HDMI out capability, digital compass and GPS. From the Vuzix goggle, we think the Vuzix Wrap 920AR would be the ideal ones to use.We are looking into the Waypoints gadgets in detail and will have a better idea of them by this weekend.

For next week our plan is to make a mock up of the persistence of vision machines, to check which method is the better one to use. We are also working with the android development environment, to see the feasibility and possibilities of using it.

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Weekly Report 1

Week 1 – (23 Aug – 27 Aug 2010)

Week 1 was mainly focused on getting the project room set up and all the work spaces organized. We met our faculty advisers Shirley Saldamarco and Scott Steven on Monday, 23 August at 2:00pm. During this meeting we each gave our preferences for team roles. We also met our other adviser, John Conomikes who will be helping us with programing and also advising us with our design. The main role of this meeting was to get to know our faculty advisers and to kick off the brain storming process for ideas about the project.

We met Brad Michael from Lockheed Martin on Wednesday, 25 Aug. Before that, we got together and came up with a list of movies, video games and cartoons which could potentially give us some ideas for the gadgets we are supposed to develop. Here is a link to the brainstorming notes from Tuesday.

The meeting with Brad gave us an overview and understanding into what Lockheed Martin wants and is expecting in terms of our project. We discussed some ideas related to 3D technology st SIGGRAPH. Thursday’s meeting with Brad informed us about the use of power point as the main strategy planning tool used by the Top Gun Academy. Going off on this information, we discussed potential 3D displays, which could project real 2D geographic data into 3D projections, its building and use. We discussed making an interactive strategy planning tool which uses persistence of vision for displaying 3D projections.

The approximate idea is to build a set of three gadgets- two of which are fully functional and one which is a potential sub-division of the other two gadgets, and present them as a packet. These gadgets will be fully functional independent of each other but can also be used together as one package.

We discussed the use of  an adhesive touch screen coating which makes any surface into a touch screen surface. The link to that information is : Adhesive Touchscreen

We discussed the team name and Jim came up with a mock up for the  logo idea.

We are presently researching building a 3D persistence of vision display which can display real geographic data, is interactive and can be used in strategy planning.

Here are some links to information we are looking at:

Revolving 3D projections

Orb

6 Non Lethal Weapons

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