The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (Daejeon, South Korea) or ETRI has demonstrated the current state of development of its so-called “tabletop holographic display” technology. The occasion for this demonstration was the 2015 Creative Korea conference and exhibition which took place from November 26th to 29th.
A short video illustrating the image produced by the system in operation can be found at the end of this article. The image is itself is in autostereoscopic 3D and cannot, of course, be reproduced in the video.
The article is a bit of a “place holder” in that the reader is alerted to the demonstration of the tabletop holographic display but goes on to report that only a few technical details describing the system are available at this time. With that in mind, here is a summary of the publically available information.
The image produced by the ETRI system is a true hologram in that the technology is based on the interference and diffraction of light waves from a laser light source. The multicolor 3D image can be seen from all 360 degrees when the image is lifted 0.5 cm above the table surface.
Development of the holographic system is the product of a collaboration between 16 individual researchers, development groups and financial backers. The team includes LG Display, Silicon Works, Yunam Optics, A Optics, Korea University and Kyungpook National University.
The research has been ongoing since 2013, when Giga Korea announced the Digital Holographic Tabletop Terminal Technology Development project. Between now and the end of the program in 2021, the goals of the project are very ambitious. These include production of a ten-inch holographic image from a “miniaturized” system. The team also plans to develop the technology in such a way that, when commercialized, the transmission and reception of holographic images can be enabled through a 5G network. – Arthur Berman
