Kameraflage
My old labmate Connor Dickie is up to something pretty interesting. His Kameraflage technology is described as
…display technology specifically designed for the camera-phone generation… By rendering content in [infrared] wavelengths we are able to create displays that are invisible to the naked eye, yet can be seen when imaged with a digital camera.
Connor has a knack for dreaming up innovative applications for off-the-shelf technology that seems incredibly sci-fi and captures the popular imagination. I previously worked with him on eyeBlog, which was featured on a number of TV shows. I have no doubt that kamerflage will generate similar levels of interest.
The technology is particularly salient to me because it presents compelling possibilities for interaction in pervasive games. This is essentially dirt-cheap augmented reality, which runs on a ubiquitous device. Games that rely on AR, previously one-off academic exercises, suddenly become massively scalable. Perhaps more importantly, the model of interaction is extremely compelling, and lends itself to detective-style gameplay. The mobile phone becomes a personal magnifying glass that reveals secrets — and every object becomes a potential clue. The potential for creating an immersive experience is pretty serious.
August 11th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Kameraflage is a great idea, but I wish there was more information available on the technology’s web site. I get that content is rendered in infrared wavelengths, but I don’t get which materials are capable of emitting infrared wavelengths. Specifically, are standard computer screens capable of doing so?
August 12th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Yeah, I had to do a little prying myself to get the whole picture. There are two things going on. The fashion line just runs off of IR LEDs embedded into jewelery clothing, so that’s what you’re seeing in the image. The ostensibly larger innovation, however, are IR images coming from a projector hooked up to articulating mirrors. So there is a somewhat significant infrastructure involved, unfortunately. It seems to me, though, that there must be some materials out there that are highly reflective to IR, and could produce a similar effect without all the high falutin’ technology — I’m going to be doing some research into that.
August 12th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
thanks for the additional info!
April 11th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Yeah, but never the less, I think this post is debatable.