The High and Low Tech Behind the Displays of Tomorrow
Display Week was May 11–16, and the expo floor was filled with the technology of tomorrow and the e-waste of next week. I expected a lot of monitors and was surprised to learn how many things qualify as a screen. There are big screens, tiny screens, screens so small you need a microscope, and screens bigger than some murals. There were thin ones, bendy ones, and undulating ones. So there were a lot.
After a while, I felt like I was seeing one bright display after another after another. By the time you’ve seen your third table of naked displays, they start looking alike. But there were a handful of new technologies that stood out. Here’s hoping they find their way into your future prototypes, or at least make your next phone something different than another black brick.
Smaller than small
The tiniest micro displays were small enough to fit into a pair of glasses.
Others were bright enough to project an image that beat out trade show lighting – and presumably sunlight at solar noon.
And some were built for more rugged applications, like a way to add a bit of safety-focused cyberpunk flair to your motorbike with side and front-facing turn projectors.
There were windshield displays for vehicles in a few places. I’m not sure how which graphics were practical, and which were there for vibes.
The 3D screen by BOE on this system looked great in person. Like most glasses-free 3D displays, you needed to put your head in just the right place, but it’s easy enough that I forgot about it before finishing my first game. As a bonus, it functions as a subtle privacy screen (not opaque enough to hide anything, but annoying enough that someone won’t look over your shoulder for long). The racing demo presented new challenges and opportunities for designers who have to figure out where HUD info should exist on the Z plane.
Outputs and inputs
Speaking of interesting controls, I expected nothing but outputs at the convention, so I was surprised and delighted to see a company focusing on input. SigmaSense’s tech was a natural fit. They make capacitive controls that add functionality to touch screens, like their rugged screen that responded in wet environments or through thick work gloves. It was their simplest design but the one that I would most appreciate having. Perfect for texting on a messy job site, or skipping ads in the rain.
Wilder than that was a four-player multi-touch display that tracked which swipe came from which player. I thought the boxes around it sensed if someone was present, but they actually transmitted an ID through the players themselves. The Who Touch system can differentiate people for games or permissions purposes.
The ShareTouch™ sister system transfers data between devices via touch. The engineering director at the booth showed it off by using an Arduino in a 3D-printed phone case to transmit a key just by tapping a tablet while the phone was nearby. To prove it wasn’t an illusion, he sent my name right after. Their goal, making two-factor authentication more convenient, is laudable.
Getting even thinner
3D-printed jigs showed up at a few booths, including Brightview, who was demoing their micro lens array film for AR glasses applications. The sample on display could take a point source (like an LED or laser) and turn it into a defined rectangle to perfectly illuminate a tiny screen. They also had line and batwing samples with impressive distribution in virtually zero volume.
Ephemeral thinness was one way a lot of tables were trying to differentiate their product, like these butterflies with pulsating patterns by Yes Optoelectronics. I’d say it’s unlike anything in nature, but that would mean ignoring cuttlefish. Anyway, the future is going to be a compact one, with credit going to modules like these.
It was funny to go from emissive displays fighting to be the brightest to the E Ink booth. My camera (and eyes) needed a moment to adjust. Every time I see reflective displays they look magical to me, whether it’s butterflies or shifting patterns on this rad guitar.
The Traveler was pretty cool too.
Now with more dimensions
Meanwhile, Incom took trippy screens into the third dimension. I have seen many a maker project use a curved bezel for a CRT screen. And though cool, they all give up the illusion a bit when viewed from the side. The fused fiber optics on display from Incom was a very cool round solution, and wins my own award for most psychedelic trade show display.
Made from millions of fused fiber optics, these blocks can turn a flat display into a curved one, steer a screen into a new angle, or ensmallify a large screen into a tiny high-resolution one. Flipping that optic the other way around turns it into an effective magnifying glass (as long as it’s making direct contact with the screen). They’re mostly used in X-ray applications at the moment, so I love that they showed off some trippy alternatives.
A hissing noise from some pneumatics drew me in, and this display was mesmerizing to watch, not for what it was showing but for how it moved. Shin-Etsu presented a deformable compound-curve 3D display that breathed in and out. It didn’t win any points for resolution, but it’s the only screen I’ve ever seen that bends in two directions without breaking. It’s easy to imagine ways to use it in DIY wearables.
Unlike projection mapping applications that rely on a user manually mapping polygons and tweaking them onsite, Summit Technology Laboratory’s Artemis system automatically maps weird surfaces, like this vase they had on display. The 360° view looked seamless the whole way around.
Getting a robot to do your work is tempting whenever you can do it. The folks at Edge Global Innovation can attest to that with their faithful five-axis human hand simulation machine. It’s the most over-the-top drawbot I’ve ever seen. This tool has X,Y,Z, and tilt control to faithfully replicate any 2D motion from a human signature on a tablet to mathematically-derived spirals. The goal is to take every bit of bias out of user evaluation and make measurable what previously was not.
I said the future was going to be compact, and it’s amazing how far engineers are pushing that definition. The bottleneck isn’t even components anymore; some LEDs are too small for solder. On a nano-scale RGB LED, it’s extremely hard to make a defined blob on one pad that doesn’t short to another. H&S Hightech’s answer is replacing typical solder with Antisotropic Conducting Film that only conducts across the thickness.
The film is filled with conductive particles spaced far enough apart to avoid touching each other. Single-axis conductive tapes have been around for a while (especially in flex circuits and shielding), but they’re exotic enough that I forget they exist. H&S Hightech showed that their control of nickel particles was fine enough to design patterns. I’m sure registration isn’t easy, but when you’re pushing the limits of classical physics, nothing is.
What’s really behind these displays?
I admit I had doubts about attending a tradeshow full of giant companies showing off goods for other giant companies. I certainly didn’t expect to see anything as whimsical as Wowcube (which won Editor’s Choice at Maker Faire Santa Clara 2018), and makers don’t usually have the budgets of Google and whatnot to test out the latest and greatest tech. So I searched hard for something that anyone could pick up today, instead of waiting for either economies of scale or scrap heaps to make it accessible.
Which is why it was so refreshing to see some fine folks from OpenCV, which depends entirely on community support. They were educating about the foundation, their podcast, and their merch. The goal was spreading awareness, and they’d been hearing from people who used OpenCV all day, even people passing by in the short time I was there.
The fanciest, most unaffordable electronics I’ve ever been near were being shown off at Display Week. But whether it was OpenCV behind AR applications, Arduino behind sensors, or Raspberry Pis pumping graphics to displays, there were maker components in all of these devices.
I hope sharing some of the weird and bleeding-edge things got some inspiration flowing. We’ll need more wonderful prototype ideas to help drive the even wilder technologies of tomorrow.
Leave a Reply