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Teleshadow - a teleconferencing system that displays shadows on paper lamp only

Nowadays, we’re so used to having web cam or video conferencing session with your friends or relatives. Of course, while having the web cam session what you see is the full images in motion and colors of your friend on the other side of earth, transmitted over the Internet and displayed on your monitor or TV. But, now the Japanese seems to have a different way of doing it. Instead of displaying the video in full images with motion and color, their newly developed system displays it in shadows only. And these shadows are to be projected on some kind of small decorative lamp.

This system is called Teleshadow, which is the idea to let you stay in touch with your friends and relatives over the Internet. It’s simple why it displays shadows only instead of the full images. Over years the Japanese homes are mainly made of paper walls as the dividers for some rooms. These paper walls preserve privacy but still let you learn about the presence of the person by the shadows cast on the paper. Similar concept is applicable to the Internet, so you can make use of it to stay in touch with loved ones, or to monitor your kids but still reserve little privacy for them.

The crucial device that takes part in this Teleshadowing is the paper lamp. Which you need to insert a smart card as the user’s identifier into the base of the lamp to display his/her shadow. In the base of the lamp is a projector that takes input from the video camera of the users involved in the Teleshadow system. There is software processing involved here to reduce the video input to an outline so it appears as shadows only. You can even touch the shadow of the person to setup a voice call. Well, currently, this system is still a prototype being worked out by Mr Yasuda and his fellow researchers. And they’ve shown to the Siggraph computer graphics convention being held in San Diego, US
via [GiZMOdO]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 5:48 am and is filed under Gadgets, Home Entertainment, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.