SideBySide Uses Handheld Projectors for Multiplayer Games
Posted in: R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili
When two handheld projectors can see each other, their separate images can interact. Photo credit: Disney Research
When I first read the emails about this project (after a Sunday evening tipple), I thought that it consisted of merely pointing two projectors at the same wall, connecting them to two gaming devices and playing head-to-head. That would be awesome enough, but the reality is even more awesomer.
The project is called SideBySide, and comes from researchers Ivan Poupyrev and Karl D.D. Willis. It combines a camera with a projector so that the two on-screen (or on-wall) images can actually interact with each other. Each unit consists of a modified DLP projector which outputs a single color of visible light and also an invisible infrared image. The IR image is detected by the camera of the second device, letting it know what the other device is up to, and where. Take a look:
Games are the obvious use-case, but if cellphones had this tech you could drag and drop files between them, for instance, using an IR 2-D barcode. Fittingly, SideBySide is a product of Disney’s research labs. And this might hint at the project’s true value: keeping the kids quiet, wherever you happen to be.
Ad-hoc Multi-user Interaction with Handheld Projectors [Disney Research. Thanks, Karl and Ivan!]
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