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Technology Focus

Human Computer Interaction Devices

Touch Display 60” - 32 touches inputs

PQ Labs multi-touch overlay is a 32-touches Plug-and Play solution for both developers and endusers.

Epson BrightLink 450Wi Interactive Projector

BrightLink 450Wi is a creative and dynamic interactive projector useful for business and education activities. It is a high-performance projector combined with a pen and it incorporates interactive functionality in one machine without the expense of an interactive whiteboard. The interactive pen associated with the projector works like a mouse on the PC/Mac. There is no need to get limited to a standard sized interactive whiteboard because 450Wi gives you the advantage of one of the largest interactive workspace areas available projecting images up to 96" in native WXGA presenting a superb view for everyone. The projector boasts of the latest 3LCD and 3-chip technology for lifelike color while sporting speaker and microphone input.

WiiMote + NunChuk + BalanceBoard

The Wii Remote is the primary controller for Nintendo's Wii console. A main feature of the Wii Remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact with and manipulate items on screen via gesture recognition and pointing through the use of accelerometer and optical sensor technology. Another feature is its expandability through the use of attachments. The attachment bundled with the Wii console is the Nunchuk, which complements the Wii Remote by providing functions similar to those in gamepad controllers.

The Wii Balance Board is shaped like a household body scale, with a plain white top and light gray bottom. It runs on four AA batteries as a power source, which can power the board for about 60 hours. The board uses Bluetooth technology and contains four pressure sensors that are used to measure the user's center of balance - the location of the intersection between an imaginary line drawn vertically through the center of mass and the surface of the Balance Board - and weight.

Kinect

Kinect for Xbox 360 is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands. The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360's audience beyond its typical gamer base.

Logitech Extreme 3D PRO - JoyStick

Logitech, the specialist in IT products & peripherals has recently announced about the launch of Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick into consumer electronics market. With advanced controls and a twist handle rudder, this stable & precise joystick gives gaming user the edge whether the user is in an acrobatic dogfight or long range strike. The twist-handle rudder allows user to turn on a dime or zero on his own target with deadly accurate directional control. It has 12 conveniently placed action buttons, eight way rubberized hat switch, twist handle and rapid fire trigger for superior gaming experience.

3D Connexion - SpaceMouse

Revolutionize the way you work with 3D applications. Pan, zoom and rotate the model or camera as if you're holding it in your hand. It's a level of control that's simply not possible with a traditional mouse and keyboard.

VR-Visualization Displays

Rear Tiled Display

Tiled displays are an emerging technology for constructing semi-immersive visualization environments capable of presenting high-resolution images from scientific simulation.

Image blending, alignment, and calibration are the key major technical challenges to producing practical tiled display systems . The goal of a high-resolution scalable display surface demands that we address the issues of how to transform a collection of separate tiles into one seamless display. Tiled display technologies offer a range of opportunities for exploring scalable, high-resolution, large-format displays, for applications ranging from smart information murals to collaboration walls to high-resolution scientific visualization. Significant progress has been made in understanding the technological challenges relating to screens, projectors, distributed graphics environments, and integration into seamless systems.

3D TV Sony Bravia 46"

There are several techniques to produce and display 3D moving pictures. The basic requirement is to display offset images that are filtered separately to the left and right eye. Two strategies have been used to accomplish this: have the viewer wear eyeglasses to filter the separate offset images to each eye, or have the lightsource split the images directionally into the viewer's eyes (no glasses required).

3D-ready TV sets are those that can operate in 3D mode (in addition to regular 2D mode), in conjunction with a set-top-box and LCD shutter glasses, where the TV tells the glasses which eye should see the image being exhibited at the moment, creating a stereoscopic image. These TV sets usually support HDMI 1.4 and (if an LED-backlit LCD Television) a minimum (input and output) refresh rate of 120 Hz; glasses may be sold separately.

Rear Passive 3D Stereo

The most common passive stereographic system uses dual projectors with polaroid filters in front of the projectors and matching filters in the glasses. The projectors can driven in many ways, by a single computer with a multiple graphics pipes, by semi independent but synced computers, synced DVD players, slide projectors, etc. This solves the main problems identified above with active systems. If the system is being driven by computer then one can use non stereo capable hardware from which there is a wide choice from the consumer game industry. There is a wider source of suitable projectors, although now one needs two of them. Lastly but critical for public environments, the glasses cost a couple of dollars instead of hundreds. Our solution is composed with 2 Barco Projectors iQ R350 with a resolution at 1440x768 and a rear projection panel 2,50x2,10 mt of dimension.

Rear Projection WorkBanch

We built our environment on a custom-made interactive workbench with a rear projection system based on an Epson with short lens. The interaction is done with a multitouch display system 32-touches from PQ Labs.

Head Mounted Display

A head-mounted display or helmet mounted display, both abbreviated HMD, is a display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet, that has a small display optic in front of one (monocular HMD) or each eye (binocular HMD).

A typical HMD has either one or two small displays with lenses and semi-transparent mirrors embedded in a helmet, eye-glasses (also known as data glasses) or visor. The display units are miniaturised and may include CRT, LCDs, Liquid crystal on silicon (LCos), or OLED. Some vendors employ multiple micro-displays to increase total resolution and field of view.

Major HMD applications include military, governmental (fire, police, etc.) and civilian/commercial (medicine, video gaming, sports, etc.).

Quadro Plex 2200 D2

Quadro Plex 2200 D2 systems provide flexibility to create environments based on a wide range of needs - from a single 4K display or projector to an eight display configuration.

Featuring NVIDIA® SLI® Mosaic technology, Quadro Plex scalable visualization solutions allow both the operating system and any professional application to transparently scale across multiple displays or projectors, and drive immersive stereoscopic 3D environments.

Providing advanced interactivity and realism of the most demanding applications and data sets, each Quadro Plex system features dual Quadro FX 5800 GPUs and a combined 8 GB of graphics memory. Scale performance even further by connecting two Quadro Plex systems, with a total 16 GB of memory, to a single workstation.

Mobile Devices

iPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia enabled smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007. An iPhone can function as a video camera (video recording was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS was released), a camera phone, can send texts and receive visual voicemail, a portable media player, and an Internet client with email and web browsing capabilities, and both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard rather than a physical one. Third-party as well as Apple application software is available from the App Store. These apps have diverse functionalities, including games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, security and advertising for television shows, films, and celebrities.

The touchscreen is a 9 cm (3.5 in) liquid crystal display with scratch-resistant glass. The capacitive touchscreen is designed for a bare finger, or multiple fingers for multi-touch sensing. The screens on the first three generations have a resolution of 320 × 480 (HVGA) at 163 ppi, while that of iPhone 4 has a resolution of 640 × 960 at 326 ppi.

The display responds to four sensors. A proximity sensor deactivates the display and touchscreen when the device is brought near the face during a call. An ambient light sensor adjusts the display brightness which in turn saves battery power. A 3-axis accelerometer senses the orientation of the phone and changes the screen accordingly, allowing the user to easily switch between portrait and landscape mode. The iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 employ A-GPS, and the iPhone 3GS and 4 also have a digital compass.

iPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. Its size and weight falls between those of contemporary smartphones and laptop computers. The iPad runs the same operating system as the iPod Touch and iPhone and can run its own applications as well as iPhone applications. The iPad will only run programs approved by Apple and distributed via the Apple App Store.

The iPad's touchscreen display is a 1024 × 768 pixel, 19.1×14.8 cm liquid crystal display, with fingerprint- and scratch-resistant glass. Like the iPhone, the iPad is designed to be controlled by bare fingers. The display responds to other sensors: an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness and a 3-axis accelerometer to sense iPad orientation and switch between portrait and landscape modes.

The iPad 2 has a front VGA camera and a rear-facing 720p camera, both capable of still images and 30fps video. The iPad can, also, use Wi-Fi network to provide location information to applications such as Google Maps. The 3G model supports A-GPS to allow its position to be calculated with GPS or relative to nearby cellphone towers; it also has a black strip on the back to aid 3G reception.

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, Handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile platform designed and marketed by Apple Inc.

The iPod touch and the iPhone share essentially the same hardware and run the same iOS operating system. The iPod touch lacks some of the iPhone's features and associated apps, such as access to cellular networks, GPS navigation (and speaker on older models).

Toshiba Folio Tablet

Toshiba Folio 100 got a 10.1-inch multitouch screen with 1024x600-pixel resolution, an Nvidia Tegra processor, stereo speakers, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, two USB ports, an SD card slot, an HDMI connector for sending video to other screens, Bluetooth communications, and 16GB of memory.

Galaxy Touch Tablet

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is an Android-based mobile phone and compact tablet computer produced by Samsung that debuted on the 2nd of September at the 2010 IFA in Berlin. The Galaxy Tab features a 7-inch (180 mm) TFT-LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi capability, a 1.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 ("Hummingbird") processor, the Swype input system, a 3.2 MP rear-facing camera and a 1.3 MP front-facing camera for video calls—running the Android 2.2 (Froyo) operating system. It supports phone functionality (as speaker phone, via provided wired ear piece or Bluetooth earpieces.), except those sold for US market. However, these tablets can still download videoconferencing apps such as Qik or Fring as alternative.

HTC Google Nexus One

The Nexus One was Google's flagship smartphone manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corporation. It became available on January 5, 2010 and uses the Android open source mobile operating system. Features of the phone include the ability to transcribe voice to text, an additional microphone for dynamic noise suppression, and voice guided turn-by-turn navigation to drivers.

the Nexus One had a 3.7 inch AMOLED screen with PenTile matrix pixel arrangement. The raster resolution is 480x800 pixels. The capacitive touchscreen which uses the Synaptics ClearPad 2000 sensor supports multi-touch gestures limited to single finger input and 2x1D two finger gestures.It has an illuminated trackball which can emit different colors of light based on the type of notification being received. A voice processor developed by Audience uses a second microphone (on the back) to suppress background noise during phone conversations.

The phone features a 5.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and digital zoom, GPS receiver, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi abilities. The Snapdragon processor allows for many advanced abilities including 720p video playback. There is built in hardware decoding for H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4 video, and can play MP3, AAC+, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and MIDI audio, and display JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It has a micro USB port which conforms to the GSMA Universal Charging Solution instead of the common mini-USB port, or HTC's mini-USB compatible format (ExtUSB). The microSD card slot allows expansion up to 32 gigabytes of card storage. Applications can be installed either to the 512 MB internal flash memory, of which 190 MB are available for that purpose, or to the microSD card.

HTC Touch Magic

The HTC Magic is a smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC Corporation. It is the second HTC device to run the Android software stack, after the HTC Dream.

The HTC Magic runs the Android operating system and comes pre-installed with a WebKit based browser. Other pre-installed software enable access to various Google services, including Gmail, Google search, Google Maps, Google Talk and YouTube. Like the HTC Dream, the Android Market application, which allows users to download new software applications from third-party developers, as well as providing publicly viewable ratings and comments, is also included with the device.

The HTC Magic offers two different sources of location information for applications such as Google Maps: a GPS receiver built-in to the chipset, and radio-tower location based on a database of mobile phone tower locations. In addition, the Magic includes a digital compass; it allows one to turn the phone showing the local map to orient it correctly.

Dell Axim PDA

The Dell Axim family of personal digital assistants was Dell's line of Windows Mobile-powered Pocket PC Devices.

Game Development Console

Sony PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series.

The PlayStation 3 features a slot-loading 2x speed Blu-ray Disc drive for games, Blu-ray movies, DVDs, CDs and other optical media. It was originally available with hard drives of 20 and 60 GB (20 GB model was not available in PAL regions) but various sizes up to 320 GB have been made available since then (see: model comparison). All PS3 models have user-upgradeable 2.5" SATA hard drives.

The PlayStation 3 uses the Sony, Toshiba, IBM-designed Cell microprocessor as its CPU, which is made up of one 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" (PPE) and eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The eighth SPE is disabled to improve chip yields. Only six of the seven SPEs are accessible to developers as the seventh SPE is reserved by the console's operating system. Graphics processing is handled by the NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', which can output resolutions from 480i/576i SD up to 1080p HD. The PlayStation 3 has 256 MB of XDR DRAM main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX.

The system has Bluetooth 2.0 (with support for up to 7 bluetooth devices), gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 and HDMI 1.4 built in on all currently shipping models. Wi-Fi networking is also built-in on all but the 20 GB models, while a flash card reader (compatible with Memory Stick, SD/MMC and CompactFlash/Microdrive media) is built-in on 60 GB and CECHExx 80 GB models

Microsoft Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox.

Some major features of the Xbox 360 are its integrated Xbox Live service that allows players to compete online, download arcade games, game demos, trailers, TV shows, music and movies and its Windows Media Center multimedia capabilities.

The main unit of the Xbox 360 itself has slight double concavity in matte white or black. The official color of the white model is Arctic Chill. It features a port on the top when vertical (left side when horizontal) to which a custom-housed hard drive unit can be attached in sizes of either 20, 60, 120 or 250 GB. Inside, the Xbox 360 uses the triple-core IBM designed Xenon as its CPU, with each core capable of simultaneously processing two threads, and can therefore operate on up to six threads at once. Graphics processing is handled by the ATI Xenos, which has 10 MB of eDRAM. Its main memory pool is 512 MB in size.

XNA Community is a feature whereby Xbox 360 owners can receive community-created games, made with Microsoft XNA Game Studio, from the XNA Creators Club . The games are written, published, and distributed through a community managed portal. XNA Community provides a channel for digital videogame delivery over Xbox Live that can be free of royalties, publishers and licenses.

Nintendo Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006.

A distinguishing feature of the console is its wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detects movement in three dimensions. Another distinctive feature of the console is WiiConnect24, which enables it to receive messages and updates over the Internet while in standby mode.

The Wii Remote is the primary controller for the console. It uses a combination of built-in accelerometers and infrared detection to sense its position in 3D space when pointed at the LEDs within the Sensor Bar. This design allows users to control the game using physical gestures as well as traditional button presses. The controller connects to the console using Bluetooth and features rumble as well as an internal speaker. The Wii Remote can connect to expansion devices through a proprietary port at the base of the controller. The device bundled with the Wii retail package is the Nunchuk unit, which features an accelerometer and a traditional analog stick with two trigger buttons. In addition, an attachable wrist strap can be used to prevent the player from unintentionally dropping or throwing the Wii Remote. Nintendo has also since offered a stronger strap and the Wii Remote Jacket to provide extra grip and protection. The Wii MotionPlus was announced as a device that connects to the Wii Remote to supplement the accelerometer and Sensor Bar capabilities and enable actions to be rendered identically on the screen in real time. Nintendo also revealed the Wii Vitality Sensor, a fingertip pulse oximeter sensor that connects through the Wii Remote.

Acquisition Tools

3D LASER SCANNER

The Escan is accurate to 150 microns and its scan is completed very quickly - a mere 7 seconds. The Escan offers professional functionality and reverse engineering capabilities.

The Escan is not limited by the size of the object to be scanned due to its portability. The Escan is can start scanning right out of the box with minimal setup. Unlike its competitors, the Escan does not require timely setup nor does it require the placement of markers to merge a scan for multiple view points. The software will do that and a whole lot more for you.

For more information visit: http://escan3d.com/

Full-HD Video Camcorder with Slow Motion

The JVC Everio GZ-HM400 features a 10.3-megapixel CMOS sensor and 3 slow-motion options in addition to Full HD 1080/50i recording.

The JVC GZ-HM400 shoots 1920 x 1080 Full HD AVCHD format at 60 frames per second. In UXP video recording mode, it records at 24Mbps, the highest bit rate currently available for AVCHD video systems. It features superior optical video stabilization to reduce the effects of movement and camera shake and has a built-in filming light and flash. It features a low lux/night shooting mode, face detection and multiple simple methods for transferring recorded content including one button transfer and an HDMI connector.

The JVC GZ-HM400 has 32GB of built-in flash memory which is faster and more reliable that other recording media, such as DVDs or hard drives in that there are no moving parts. The camera also will accommodate an addition SD/SDHC memory card up to 32GB, effectively doubling the storage size.

3D Full-HD Video Camcorder

HDC-S900 is one of the best-ever Panasonic Video Camcorder.

The 3MOS System Colorfully renders 2D and 3D Images and has 7.59 million effective motion image pixels (2.53 megapixels x 3). This sensor separates the light received through the lens into the three primary colors -- red, green and blue, and processes each color independently, to offer images with significantly better color quality, detail and gradation than 1MOS sensor system.
1,080/50p recording (full-HD, 1,920 x 1,080, 50 progressive recording) at a 28-Mbps bit rate conveys about twice the information of 1,080i (interlace) recording to produce the ultimate in image quality, exceeding even conventional full-HD images. It minimizes afterimages and flickering caused by subject motion, and renders crisp, detailed images.

Attaching the 3D Conversion Lens (VW-CLT1) to the camcorder it's possible to record 3D images in AVCHD format firsthand. Incorporating Panasonic's 3MOS technology, users can easily create their own 3D movies in extreme reality. The AVCHD format enables playback using a Panasonic’s VIERA TV and Blu-ray DiscTM player/recorder. A TV that is capable of side-by-side method 3D playback, 3D Eyewear, and HDMI cable connection are required.

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