Pico Projectors—
Firefly or Bright Future?
Raimund Dachselt
University of Magdeburg | dachselt@ovgu.de
Jonna Häkkilä
University of Oulu | Nokia Research Center | jonna.hakkila@nokia.com
Matt Jones
Swansea University | always@acm.org
Markus Löchtefeld
German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence | markus.loechtefeld@dfki.de
Michael Rohs
University of Munich | michael.rohs@ifi.lmu.de
Enrico Rukzio
University of Duisburg-Essen | enrico@rukzio.de
• Figure 1. A pico prototype housing an iPod,
a projector, and distance sensors.
There’s something magical about
light. Perhaps you can remember
using a flashlight as a child to
trace a space story on the bedroom ceiling, or, more exciting
still, to enhance scary stories
under the canvas of a camping
holiday. Or, on a long, lazy summer afternoon, the school vacation
coming soon, reflecting the sun off
the glass of your watch, daringly
close to the teacher’s face.
Today’s mobile technology
landscape already has its magical
devices: the alluring touchscreen
phones and tablets. Perhaps,
though, in these trapped-light
boxes, we are missing something
of the wonder of projection. Heads
down, we prod the surface of
these Narcissus pools, consumed
mainly by our own reflections as
we engage in the digital world.
There is an emerging mobile
technology, however, that might
save us from such introverted
computing. Through the emergence of various pico-projector
technologies, it is now possible to
build projector phones, camcord-ers with built-in projectors, and
small accessory projectors that
can be connected to other mobile
devices.
In terms of both quality and
impact, these small video-output
devices are near the state of the
art seen in camera phones a
decade ago. They are niche, geeky
devices, and the marketing scenarios presented in ads are disheartening: businessmen watching catch-up TV on a hotel wall,
groups of executives enjoying an
ad-hoc PowerPoint presentation at
the watercooler.
March + April 2012