History of heliodisplay In late 2003, a small company from the San Francisco Bay Area demonstrated a uni que

revolutionary display technology. The prototype device projected an image in thin air just above it, creating an illusion of a floating hologram, reminiscen t of the famous scene from 'Star Wars' in which R2-D2 projects a hologram of Pri ncess Leia. The development of this distinctive technology, dubbed Heliodispla y by its developer Chad Dyner, began early this decade after Dyner decided to tr ade a promising career as an architect to become an inventor. Dyner bought an or dinary digital projector, took it apart, and spent entire days trying to figure out a way to stop in midair the light coming from the projector without engaging a traditional screen. Though the details are kept a closely-guarded secret, Dyn er was willing to provide a general description of the way the Heliodisplay work s. Displaying an image using conventional projectors requires a non-transparen t medium, typically screens, walls, or even water, but air, which is transparen t, cannot be used. Since 2003, I02 Technology, the California-based company Dyn er founded to commercialize his invention, began selling his device under the br and name Heliodisplay M2 for just under$20,000, out of reach of most consumers. The M2 projects its 76.2 cm (30'') diagonal floating image at a height of 71 cm (28") above the projector. The native resolution of the M2 is 800 x 600 though i t can support up to l280 x l024, and the image can be viewed from as much as a l 50 degrees angle. The M2i model includes a proprietary system, called Heliocast, for interactively controlling the displayed image. A sensor inside the M2 ident ifies the movement of the user's hand in the area of the projected image and the Heliocast software calculates the movement of the object projected.These projec ted images and video are two-dimensional, (i.e. planar) but appear 3D since ther e is no physical depth reference.