Floating holograms for contactless interfaces

The recent COVID19 outbreak has shown that touching buttons in a public space presents risks of viral spread. Buttons pervade public spaces, from toilet flushing, and elevator controls to keypads on ATM's. TruLife Optics wants to use its expertise as a world leader in holography to make such interfaces safe, by developing holograms that project the image of a button or a key pad in mid-air, so users can interact with such floating images twinned with a sensor, avoiding touching any physical surface.

Currently, contact-free infrared sensors have the disadvantage that they do not provide a visual cue, i.e., they do not show where to swipe nor when they have been activated. Think about how difficult it can be to use a water tap in a public toilet! TruLife Optics will develop a novel hologram prototype that generate a floating image of two lift call buttons. These buttons will be shown in a U shaped display with light and sensor. The hologram will be seen to float in mid air - 4 cm from the floor of the unit (meaning it will be hard to touch the physical surface). A finger sensor will detect which of the up or down buttons has been pressed and an audio indication of up or down will be given.

The holograms will be designed so that the buttons can be easily seen from a wide range of viewpoints. Also, when coming closer, one or several buttons , or numbers will indicate exactly where to press or swipe. The image to be projected, i.e., a button, a keypad, an arrow, or a combination of these, can be adapted quite straightforwardly to the application in mind. The first laboratory prototypes will focus on showing a single interactive entity, i.e., a button,

In later stages (not part of this funding) we will have feedback on the holograms themselves. The hologram can be illuminated by two LED's with different colours, e.g., a green and a red light. As a result, the colour of the button is an indication of whether is it on or off. We are in touch with sensor suppliers to evaluate how to pair the sensor with the hologram.

A second generation will build upon the idea of the floating button, i.e., it will generate a numeric floating keypad, like those on an ATM machine, twinned with a commercially available finger tracking sensor. We will build a demo showing numbers appearing on a screen as the floating keypad is "pressed" in mid air.

We have multiple enquiries from potential customers and we have a partnership with a leading sensor company who wants to co-develop the technology and twin our holograms with their sensors and then market to all their customers.