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Focus + Context Laser Projection with BaseLase

BaseLase is an interactive laser projection display that combines a 360 degree low resolution laser projection display, with three high resolution steerable laser projection displays. By an ingenious combination of mirrors, the system doesn’t need to be mounted on the ceiling but instead sits only 5 feet tall on the ground.

All of the displays run off of a single custom built laser projector which mounted in the base of the unit. This laser projector then hits one of four mirrors, a convex hyberbolic 360 mirror, or one of three steerable “focus” mirrors.

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The large 360 degree image is formed by bouncing the laser off of a custom made convex mirror, that shoots the image onto the floor around the device, covering up to 5m. The team started with a standard “security” spherical mirror, but quickly found that the mirror shape drastically distorted the size of the laser beam. Up close the display looked great, but farther away the beam was dispersed and difficult to make out. To fix this, the team created their own custom hyberbolic shaped mirror of course! They created the custom shape with vacuum forming, then coated it in aluminum.

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The team even created their own laser projector! They combined a laser, some galvos and electronics driven by the sound-card of a computer to create their own low power, cheap, laser display.

The system is made interactive via a ring of depth sensors mounted in the base of the display. Using OpenNI and NITE, the system can track multiple user’s skeletons surrounding the display.

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Overall, the system supports some pretty cool interactions. Users can touch content with their feet, use their hand as a cursor, or interact with their own shadow (their virtual silhoutte projected on the floor).

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This project will appear at the 2015 ACM CHI conference, and it is so awesome it won a Best Paper Award. Check out the other cool work the group has done, including a transparency controlled display.