As well as self-driving cars and contact lenses that can measure blood sugar levels, Google wants to build giant screens that will clip together like Lego blocks.
The WSJ says that the project, under development at the Google X labs, uses small, modular displays. These can then attach to each other to form a large, seamless image. Mary Lou Jepsen, formerly of Pixel Qi, is heading the development.
One of the WSJ’s three sources said, “The big challenge is to electronically, and through software, do the stitching between the seams”. The source added that Google X is trying to recruit more people to work on the project. Engineers previously with Samsung and Qualcomm are already said to be involved.
Display Daily Comments
This is an area of great interest to us. It has become clear in recent years that LCD is pretty well limited to 100″ for a number of reasons. Going above that means some kind of tiling system, as displays larger than that can be a nightmare to handle. At one time, the only choice was projection at this size, but, increasingly LED is being used. On Monday, at Gitex, we have an appointment to see a new 1.2mm Silicon Core LED display that allows a 110″ image with FullHD. However, LEDs are expensive, so alternatives are welcome. We reported, some years ago, on technology from Screen Technologies of Cambridge, which tried to use plastic lenses to flare out the image from commercial LCDs to cover the area of the bezel, but there were a couple of technical roadblocks, and the lenses caused a big loss in contrast. The comments about stitching also suggest some kind of projection scheme. We’ll be watching with interest. (BR)
