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pCubee 3D Display Skips iPad For iCube

pCubee is an interesting hardware prototype from the University of British Columbia's Human Communications Technology Lab. It uses some clever hacks to use current generation technology to present you with a sort of 3D "tank" that you can look into.

We have designed a personal cubic display that offers novel interaction techniques for static and dynamic 3D content. We arrange five small LCD panels into a box shape that is light and compact enough to be handheld. The display uses head-coupled perspective rendering and a real-time physics simulation engine to establish an interaction metaphor of having real objects inside a physical box that a user can hold and manipulate. We have demonstrated four types of interaction techniques with pCubee: viewing a static scene, navigating through a large landscape, playing with colliding objects inside a box, and stylus-based manipulation of objects.


(pCubee 3D 3D display box)

Robert Heinlein had an idea that seems pretty similar to pCubee in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land; he called it a "stereovision tank":

They went to the living room; Jill sat at his feet and they applied themselves to martinis. Opposite his chair was a stereovision tank disguised as an aquarium; he switched it on, guppies and tetras gave way to the face of the well-known winchell Augustus Greaves.

I'm hereby copyrighting the word "iCube" right now, so don't even think of taking that name for the next generation, three-dimensional iPad, Steve. Hold that in the palm of your hand.

From pCubee at Human Communication Lab.

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