Mini Laser Projector on its way

If anyone was at FlashForward San Francisco 2004, and you saw Bill Buxton’s opening talk, you’ll certainly remember the little device he showed off. It was a laser projector about the size of a pack of cigarettes, that could project an image on any surface. He used it to project some photos. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen. He predicted that we would start seeing them on the market in a year or two.

Well, it’s been two years, and I finally saw the first mention of one of these devices on Engadget. Here it is:

And here’s a link:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/13/new-pvpro-mini-projector-has-no-moving-parts/

A few details I remember from his talk will point up how cool these devices will eventually be.

1. Because it uses lasers (the same lasers in the supermarket barcode scanners), there is no need for focusing. The beams just scan across and create the image on any surface, literally laser sharp.

2. The demo he showed and the model shown in the link above are monochrome. At the time he said it was because blue lasers were hard to produce and expensive, but some breakthrough had just occurred to make them easier and cheaper, so we should soon see RGB output.

3. Think about that supermarket scanner. It doesn’t just project an image, it can read the surface it’s reflecting off of. Same with these projectors eventually. It will be able to detect, for example, when you move your hand on the image. Get this concept: You walk into a restaurant, hook this up to your pda, shine it on an empty surface of the table and start showing your presentation to your client. You reach down with your finger and start moving things around, clicking buttons. Yes, the restaurant table is now an interactive touch screen!

It looks like we’re still a ways off from seeing consumer versions of these things, but it is exciting to see this device at least mentioned. It is still one of the things that I am really looking forward to in the future.