New technology could make mini projectors possible
I love video projectors, but they can often take up valuable space in the middle of a room as they’re still relatively large, particularly in a home environment. So I was interested to read of news of a projector that has been developed that’s about the size of a sugar cube. Actual dimensions are 16mm long by 9mm wide and 9mm deep.
The prototype developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany uses only one tiny mirror – instead of the millions found in traditional projectors – which vibrates extremely quickly to diffuse the light emitted from coloured lasers in order to form the image.
There’s a slight problem in that green diode lasers aren’t yet small enough to be used in something this size, so with just red and blue there’s a limitation on colour palette, but researchers expect this to be overcome as laser technology evolves.
Applications could include projecting images from mobile phones, laptops and other devices. Apparently it’s also easier to project onto non-flat surfaces, which could open up some creative applications.
(Via BBC)
