Idle Diffractions

Local Cultures and the Internet

(No optics in this one, but, you still might enjoy it)

Traveling, especially abroad always brings new perspectives on the world.  I knew I was in trouble when on my first trip out of North America I failed at my first mission; get coffee.  Now, you’d think, traveling to New Zealand would not present a communication challenge.  But, literally the first thing I tried to do, failed.  There was a counter, with assorted pastries and behind it, coffee!  How hard could this be, even after a 14 hour flight?  The person behind the counter was not the problem.  I stared intently at the target, coffee, and said, “I’d like a coffee to go”.  She stared back, a little less intently, but, initiated no action.  Come on, I’m still in the airport, those were English words, weren’t they?  Hmmm, try again, “I’d like a coffee to go”.  Nothing.  Try pointing and gesturing – try frantically – no response.  OK, step back; watch how the natives do it.  What is the culturally proper phrase?  “I’d like coffee to take away”.  Immediate delivery.  Ever since I’ve figured it was hopeless to travel to a country that is not some version of English based.  Even if you do manage a few phrases of the language, you do not know the culture.

So, what brought this on today?  We’ll, we’re in Europe, France, with a native speaker (good thing).  But, this morning, a phrase comes across in the e-mail referring to blarney, a somewhat arcane phrase, but I believe fairly ubiquitous in the US, but, apparently not in France.   But, now we have the Internet.  Not only do you get the definition of blarney, a few contexts to use it in, but, you get the story of Cormac MacDermot McCarthy a castle owner in the 16^th century who acquired this reputation for talking his way through things (like how not to have your castle co-opted by the resident monarch).  How cool is that, and I didn’t even need 3D.  The website is built to attract tourists to Ireland, big business.  Hence, a pretty unique website.  Check it out. 

http://www.irelandseye.com/blarney/blarney.shtm

We did spend 10 weeks working from the University of Galway 2 summers ago invited by the now OSA president, Prof. Chris Dainty (OK, I snuck optics in).  Learned some culture – mussels are best eaten with significant amounts of Guinness.  But, that would be another story. 

Back to the point.  It is impressive how rapidly the Internet has become populate with things like the above.  It is increasingly valuable, as the local environment globalizes, particularly the US universities.  Our son is spending the summer in South Korea.  Why?  He thought it would be good to learn Korean – figured 3-weeks would do it.  It is a new generation.  So while he will learn something of one culture first hand, there are many more to go and until he can get there, there is the Internet.

Reconsider the world, without mice

I am continuing an interaction with a research group that works in virtual reality and augmented reality this week. Some 5 years ago, I was working with Jim McGuire to make the world’s first pair of seethrough augmented reality displays, seen below. They were quite nice, I thought. Clearly, after peddling them around the world for 3 years, what do I know? They are now on a shelf with a long line of nice prototypes, at the ODALab at the University of Rochester. But, we digress. 

 

A very nice ophthalmic quality seethrough display – very nice, on the shelf awaiting the next generation to displace it.

On the positive side, I saw a very inspiring research project this week in France at the University of Bordeaux 3, (or was it 4) aimed at our work environment in optical design, which led to the following. Prof. Rolland, who is traveling with me, pointed out that there are people who think about fundamental things like, what would the world be like if the mouse/touch pad technology had failed, for whatever reason. In her case, they were thinking about this at the University of North Carolina in the 90s, and here in France, they are still thinking about it.

I have noticed, off and on, that the environment for interaction seems to be shrinking. Ever since we replaced our continuous roll Calcomp plotter (who remembers those), I have been bothered. We still use the Calcomp plot driver as the basis for plotting. But, why would we abandon an interface that is limited in 1-dimension for one that is limited in 2-dimensions (single sheet printers). I’m the guy who in the dying days of Calcomp bought a 48”x continuous plotter – how cool was that (no one would walk down the hall to get the output)? I was told it was so much more convenient with a 2-D constraint, it fit on your desktop. This is a reason? So, continuing the trends, now I spend my day staring at a 10-14” space interacting with a key board and a touch pad. Now, touch pads are pretty amazing things, but, why is the space shrinking like this? Whoever stood around a drafting board developing new concepts? If you’re under 40, you probably have never seen a drafting table.

So, at least some people seem to have noticed this problem and they are bringing back the large format environment. In fact, I think I’ll go invest in drafting board companies, if any are left. I’m definitely looking for a drafting board when I get back – I think the last time I saw one was 10 years ago as it was wheeled out of the office, took too much space in the assigned 88 sq. ft. This whole push to lean and mean has left us just that lean on input and cranky (or is that from a different source).

So, what is new is Kinect; a device that can sit on a drafting board or other substantial work space (think 36” x 48” replacing 10” x 14”) and track your hands and your fingers for $100. It can learn (OK, be taught, hence the research project) how you want to interact with the workspace. You are no longer continuing to be squeezed into a more efficient space. You are moving back to higher bandwidth of visual data input, but, this I consider good. Why compute all this information and never even see it? When combined with a projector above the table ($1,000 and a camera $100), now you have a new space, with space. We have all this computing power creating data and we continue to shrink the space that the output is being reported to so that our office can be smaller, it’s madness. Remember the 10”x14” space? I decided to measure, it’s actually 8”x13”. What is it after the icons and tool bars and navigators that are hiding all the screens I would like to be seeing real-time? I just measured my CODE V command mode active area, 6”x10”. And I want at least 8 graphics windows in that space to make sure I am always trying to see the text underneath (now, to the credit of Dave Hasenauer, at least we have the TOW options that tabs the windows). It is out of control. Time for a reset.

So, watch for updates – this could get interesting again, I hope. Or, it could follow the glasses, to the prototype history shelf.

Will the future be in 3D?

I’m in at the University Bordeaux this week learning about their research in virtual and augmented reality, where I was invited to ArcheoVision.  This is a museum of archeology that is experimenting with the use of virtual reality combined with robotic replication based on high technology laser scanning to creative an environment that will attract, educate, and entertain the public without compromising the science of archeology, including monster (15 foot) reproduction marble statues (very cool – you can even order your own - $30,000).  They also offer to scan your head in 3D and make an accurate marble bust, for, you know what, only $2,999 (actually very cool too, we’re considering it).

We met with Prof. Robert Vernieux, an archeologist’s archeologist who spent nearly 15 years in Egypt.  He is now involved in many things, one being creating 3-D environments for the general public.  There are a few paths.  In one case, they have created a 3-D image file of ancient objects, which are then projected in a small theater environment, with some reasonable quality projectors.  In this way, otherwise small perhaps nondescript objects can become a center of attention.  Rather than lying up on the screen, 15 feet away, the 3D projection can effectively place it in your hand as a sharp, clear, fascinating image.  When combined with the lecture that places the piece in context, for a scientist at least, it definitely keeps you awake.  The second series we saw was a projection of antique amateur stereo postcards.  What has happened is Prof. Vernieux came upon a collection at a market in Egypt and brought them back to France where they are scanned and interfaced to the auditorium projectors.  Again for me at least, these were fascinating and I think I could have easily watched them for an hour.  Based on the success of the stereo postcards he found, from 1868 and 1903, of ruins in Egypt being excavated by archeologists, the center has advertised that they are accepting donations of stereo postcards from Egypt.  They have been sent thousands that they are now scanning.   But, the public is not coming in droves.  The place is rather quiet.

Now, to the point.  A group of scientists then gathered for a few hours to discuss whether 3D is viable.  It is not clear.  It is currently a technology that is extremely data intensive and often overwhelmingly time consuming.  The consensus is the 3D technology is currently somewhat of a toy, that pretty much everyone enjoys, for about 10 minutes, and then they say, “is that all there is?”, the answer often being – yes. 

An interesting observation, after designing a 3D “Cave” experience for the museum; everyone remembers the Cave, the delivery of the 3D technology, and no one remembers the archeology. This is not the goal.

So, as always, this is just a random musing, but, it will be interesting to see if 3-D becomes a standard technology in the next decade, or, goes the way of the laser disc player (which I happened to inherit with the house I recently bought – I have a great player, but, no discs – may have to do something about that).

Should you speak French (I don’t), you might enjoy,

http://archeovision.u-bordeaux3.fr/

Faster, Smaller, (Higher), but, Maybe not Cheaper

Report from Laser Munich

I was at Laser Munich last week, again.  And, again, it seemed that Europe is continuing to emerge as a hotbed for optics.  Laser Munich makes other similar conferences in the U.S. look, to be generous, anemic.  I consider this good; it seems to be reinvigorating the field (at least for us classical optics types).  I only made it to half of the exhibits and 1/5 of the posters, but, in that I saw many things of interest.  As always, things seem to be going towards faster (femto is becoming atto), smaller (nano is almost a standard), and more complex (freeform is everywhere, even if we cannot measure it).

 

The Synopsys spread at Laser Munich.  There was a definitive “race for the top” (e.g. ceiling), which it appears that we won.  A nice touch came at the end of the day when some key vendors, including Melles Griot, conveniently next door, would bring in cases of German beer and one evening a vendor even brought bratwurst for dinner (perhaps unfortunately for them, I never figured out who the vendor was, unless it was the conference itself).

There were two major technical conferences of interest to me (this is where EOS, SPIE, and OSA all sponsor technical conferences).  The first was the EOS conference on Manufacturing of Components in combination with the SPIE conference on Metrology.  Here, some of the latest thinking in how to manufacture and measure (still unsolved) freeform surfaces was at the center of the discussion.

The other conference was, as was the case two years ago, the OSA/SPIE conference on OCT (optical coherence tomography).  This year was as excellent as the last, with one of the fastest overviews of 20 years of technology I’ve ever seen, presented by Prof. Drexler and an excellent tutorial by the founder of the field, Prof. Fujimoto.  To me, this is one of the most interesting cases of combining a shopping list of the courses that are taught in graduate school and from that emerges a technology.  It uses interferometry (white light Michelson), exotic sources (femto lasers, super continuum, super luminous diodes (I wonder what will be the adjective after “super”, ultra perhaps? – we’ll see), high resolution spectrometers, Fourier transforms, and a lot of tricks, developed over 20 years to create, recently, images of layers under the skin. 

While OCT is aimed at axial (1-D) resolution for application to the eye, OCM (optical coherence Microscopy) is directed at collecting images in 3D of cells under the skin.  The University of Rochester is the first to develop subcelluar 3D microscopy, biopsy level images in a configuration that can move to the clinic.  The latest image, acquired last week in the latest configuration, is shown below.  This technology has one of the fastest growth curves ever seen and demonstrates that exponential growth in technology is continuing to sprout up all around us. In optometry, the first clinical use was 2002, and since then it has grown to approaching 10 million procedures, at $48/each.  This would make a nice topic for Harvard Business Review.   One of the UofR recent images, which represents the state of the art, is included below, courtesy of Prof. Jannick Rolland, the Brian Thompson Chair Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics.  These images are created through the application of optical engineering to advance complex ideas in science, an ongoing theme.

 

No scalpel was involved in acquiring these images of cellular structure under the skin.  Article currently posted in pending publication in Optics Letters.

The New Frontier(s) - Part 3: Beijing, China

So, since we were in the area, otherwise known as in Asia, we went the following week to Beijing for SPIE’s Photonics Asia, which we also attended the last time it was held.  We were hosted, as before, by Prof. Wang and also by Prof. Son, who had recently been a visiting professor at the University of Rochester.  This is a somewhat interesting conference in that it is heavily attended by Chinese students, over 1,000, many of whom give talks on their research.  This provides a very interesting perspective on the state of optics research in China.  In the course of the conference, we did manage to almost get our fill of Peking duck (but not quite).

 

 

The Roast Duck Restaurant (chain) in Bejing.

One of the conference highlights was the plenary paper by “Willi” Urlich from Zeiss, who gave a nice, well-illustrated talk on the history of progress in lithography lenses.  As with the prior conference, the evening banquet was quite an affair, with quite an elaborate operatic showing during a nice dinner.

 

The SPIE Photonics Asia Dinner.

The final two days were spent visiting labs at the university and the Dali Lama temple, a site we had missed on the prior visit, while many of the “first-timers” to China, including Julie Bentley, did the big tour of the great wall and the other major sites.

Entering the Dali Lama Temple in Beijing.

 

More sites in China. On the left, Dr. Son, our colleague and guide.

On the final day, Dr. Son took us to an emerging artists quarter in Beijing.  This turned out to be very interesting and is highly recommended.  It is an area of about 8 square blocks with small shops displaying dominantly original art.  There is sculpture, painting, and on and on.  The work was very original and really quite inspiring, I thought.  While I will show some art in the moment, there was a large museum, with a number of lets call them large for mat pieces.  The most striking of which were the remainders of train, that was buried in a tunnel cave-in during an earthquake in 2007.  In honor of those who died, the artist and a number of dedicated volunteers extracted the train from the wreckage, and brought it to the museum – quite a sobering piece – very dramatic.  It is accompanied by a video of the extraction and transport, all with very primitive “tools”.

The train buried in a tunnel during an earthquake in 2007.

On the art side, there are many choices, one of which is shown below.  There were a number of these large outdoor sculpture displays.  This one was found in “Originality square.”  The gentleman gesturing was attempting somewhat emphatically to convey a message – I have no idea of what, however, as we were unaccompanied at that point.

 

A very dynamic sculpture – there were literally hundreds of wolves all around us – each individual – very impressive.  The gentleman in green was attempting to convey some important (to him at least) message to me – which was somewhat a pointless exercise, but interesting.

As we were leaving, I noted this somewhat customized mode of transportation – built in gloves – there are still many bicycles motorized and otherwise throughout the city.

 

 Local transportation – complete with built-in gloves.

On our return, the leaves had fallen, and the OSA annual meeting was off and running, with the notable event that Prof. Rolland (also known as my wife) was elected to the OSA Board of Directors.  I think that means more trips to come, although, October may (and perhaps hopefully was) our record for the most diverse single month we’ve encountered recently.

 

Late fall at the Institute of Optics.

 

 

An indication of travels to come in 2011.

The New Frontier(s) - Part 2: Seoul, South Korea

After Brazil, our next stop (after overnighting in Washington DC) was Seoul, South Korea for the ISMAR conference (AR/Augmented Reality).  This was a conference for which Prof. Rolland was the general chair in Orlando the prior year.  This is the group that is creating content for augmented reality, whenever anyone gets around to creating hardware to display it on.  This was our first trip to Seoul and we had an opportunity to supplement the expenses and stay in the Lotte Hotel – a worthwhile experience.  There is a lobby area that overlooks a waterfall and all in all, it was a very well-appointed place as can be noted from the lighting in the elevator.  Ever since I became involved in illumination design, I have learned, from those I hire, that the first test in an interview is does the candidate look up at the lights in the elevator – this is a good sign.

The elevator light in the Lotte Hotel, Seoul, South Korea.

At the conference, we presented a full-day tutorial on head worn displays that was well attended.  The exhibit was small, but, as it was last year, interesting.  Notable in their absence, there were no prototypes or other head worn displays this year, not a particularly good trend.  There was, however, a very inspiring display of how book reading, expecially for children, could rapidly become more engaging.   As shown below, there are now reading screens where as you turn the page of an underlying book, the “scene” that is being described in the book comes alive in an animated (short-looped clip) 3D.  I found it very inspiring.

Augmented Reality content underdevelopment to enhance children’s books.

The keynote speaker at the conference, Henry Fuchs, has led the field for decades now, and gave a number of talks.

 

Henry Fuchs – the keynote speaker at ISMAR 2010, Seoul, South Korea

The architecture at and around the conference center was quite dramatic, and Seoul in general made for an interesting visit.

Outside the ISMAR 2010 Conference Center

Since we were at an augmented information conference, it was interesting to note that our taxi driver, shown below, probably would have been a safer driver with a projective display, rather than using his cell phone for navigation (he was lost).

Taxi driver navigating by cell phone in Seoul – why we need a projective display, soon!

Before we leave, a few random shots from South Korea.

I don’t know – it just was calling me.

That was a really tall building – nice example of horizon lines – optics is everywhere.

A shot from the Forbidden City tour on the last day.

City of Space and Hubble 3D

This week's entry is written by Bruce Irving.

On a recent business trip to Toulouse, France, I had a few hours free one day, and I visited a space museum called Cité de l’Espace. This excellent museum has many indoor exhibits related to space exploration, the solar system, and astronomy. It also has a number of outdoor exhibits, most of which are life-size mockups of various spacecraft, including the Russian Mir space station and the gigantic Ariane 5 launch vehicle (53 meters tall). There is also a large-scale model of the solar system, which illustrates the correct relative sizes (but not distances) of the planets.

The only spacecraft model of a directly optical nature is the ESA XMM-Newton x-ray telescope (launched in 1999, still operational). A separate building houses a large-scale digital planetarium and an IMAX Theater, which was showing the film Hubble 3D. This is a beautiful film celebrating the history and the amazing imagery of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The film incorporates 3D IMAX footage that was shot by NASA astronauts on the final Hubble servicing  mission (STS-125) in May 2009. The huge IMAX 3D camera was installed in the shuttle’s payload bay and positioned so it could film the space-walking astronauts as they worked on repairing the enormous HST, which had been captured and mounted on the repair platform in the rear of the payload bay.

The space walks were long, but the film clips had to be brief since they only had 8 minutes and 30 seconds of film installed. The 3D clips shot on the mission were combined with IMAX footage from previous service missions, as well as training footage and scenes of the astronauts inside the shuttle discussing the mission (and joking around). In addition, many of the astronomical images from HST were edited to show beautiful 3D effects that strongly demonstrate that these are indeed huge, 3D objects in space. The beautiful Hubble images really seem to come alive as you fly through nebulas and star nurseries and onto the very edge of the known universe.

 

Notes from a visit to the Large Binocular Telescope

 

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking an “insider’s” tour of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), currently the largest telescope in the world based on baseline (22M) and I believe collecting aperture (although it’s hard to keep track), at 2X8.2M.  It was a very nice afternoon and the trees at the peak (10,200’) had turned a brilliant fall yellow.

Since one of my first experiences in optics was to star test one of the last of the six original mirrors in the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins south of Tucson, it was quite a reset to view how massive the LBT building is compared to the original MMT building, which can be seen from the LBT.  At one point we trekked all the way to the roof (OK, a lot of the trek involved a series of elevators), which is over 200 feet off the ground, to an unseen tiny cement escarpment that provides an amazing view back to Tucson and beyond.  In that we are recently applying nodal aberration theory to these telescopes, it is an interesting perspective to look at an 8.2M mirror and then contemplate the question, what does a 10-micron decenter actually mean?  With these mirrors, there is no absolutely smooth edge circular aperture to measure from.  These are spin-cast mirrors made at Roger Angel’s lab in Tucson and as such the edge is good, but is not a micron-level reference surface.  The experience reminds me of when I worked on an Air Force conformal optics project.  We kept asking for the wing profiles to a number like 10 microns.  The Air Force finally decided the best response was to put us on a plane to St. Louis, where we learned airplanes are made pretty much the same way as a Grumman canoe, containing over three miles of wire.  They do not work well as an optical reference surface.

Additional LBT informational websites are shown below:
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Binocular_Telescope
http://www.aip.de/groups/lbt/
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/lbti/lbti_index.cfm (very short)
 
YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtOyCcJtzcw

I came across a website titled, “100 Hours of Astronomy,” which was created in the spring of this year as part of the global celebration of the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope. I did not spend much time there, but it appears to be a tremendous series of on-site interviews with astronomers at telescopes around the world. I look forward to taking some time to explore the website – enjoy!

100 Hours of Astronomy main page:
http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/