A Couple Links or, How to Make Old-School SF Free-Air Holograms and (HOG) Wheels

[Drashner1]

Hey all,

This was posted to the Yahoo WBG by Sporkhork, a member who's been away for a while. I'm forwarding this on on his behalf, although I'm hoping he will be joining us here soon. Enjoy:

Hey, guys! Been, what, a year or more since I last dropped by?

Here's a couple cool things I've come across lately.

It seems that some clever folks in Japan figured out how to project moving 3D
images into thin air. Yep, just like out of Ringworld, Star Wars, and many other
sci-fi works. It's still in the "Atari phase", but take a look:

http://igm.univ-mlv.fr/~vnozick/publicat...E_2008.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY


I've been fascinated by the prospect of omnidirectional rolling movement for at
least a decade, but Mecanum wheels are so slow in lateral movement, and actually
making working spherical wheels like out of that car in 'I, Robot' would be an
engineering and maintenance nightmare, so I haven't had much hope for it lately.
But, ah! Take a look at this:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robot...ive-system-\
like-this-before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispheric...aled_wheel

Damn, that thing can really book it!