I met with Dr. Nic Lawrence from Light Blue Optics at their press event. The bar tenders there were nothing short of amazing.  But the technology they showed was even more startling.  The had a virtual keyboard that really worked.  But unlike the evoMouse cube from celluon which used a single red laser (to achieve their low $149 price point), Light Blue Optics uses three lasers: red, green and blue to generate their image.   The image that they project onto the table is bright and vivid in color.  So instead of just a keyboard, their prototype device runs Windows CE, and it generates 15 lumins when playing movies, or when doing menu navigation type tasks they focus the lasers to get as much as 35 lumins.

 The core technology is unlike the other laser based projectors I’ve seen so far, and is based on 4 years of research as a company, which was started as a spin off of phd research of the 4 founding technologists.  The interesting thing about laser based projectors, is that it doesn’t require focusing, since the laser beam is coherently focused already.  This particular projector system uses a micro LCD to act as a defuser and thus uses constructive and destructive waves of light to generate the clear images.  The main advantage of the defusing the light with a micro LCD is that there is not light wasted.  Instead they are able to focus the light where it is meaning full for the image.  The combine this with a CCD/UV light source to allow direct manipulation of the user interface on the projected surface.  The prototype units weren’t all perfectly tuned, but the well tuned ones gave an excellent experience, with feedback of for your manipulations as you try their demo applications: games, photo viewer, drink ordering application, whiteboarding/email, etc.

I spoke also with other members of their staff and they are exploring a broad range of applications.  Because the laser is always in focus, they are perfect for heads up displaying in applications such as fighter jets.  And their technology is so compact, and requires so little cooling that there are applications in retail, manufacturing, gaming, and many other possible areas.