Most Star Wars fan will remember the original movie released over 40 years ago in 1977 and how it introduced some of the greatest sci-fi technology to be shown in a movie. One such piece of technology was the hologram call, which allowed Princess Leia to talk to Luke Skywalker.
This work of science-fiction is now a reality as a company called Leia Display Systems (named after the Star Wars character, Princess Leia), pioneers the first ever system which lets users talk to 3-D images of their loved ones. So far the company has successfully built interactive 3D hologram machines, but it plans on having a working model of the entire telephone operating system by next year and plans to have it available in the market within five years. The idea for the concept came from the effect produced when laser lights at a night club hit dry ice.
The working of the holographic telephone system is pretty simple. The person will sit in front of a special camera with two lenses and a microphone. The images from the two lenses will be used to produce the 3-D effect of the hologram and sent to the receiving end via the Internet. The image will be received by a hologram machine that will project it on to a water vapor screen which will provide the third dimension of the image. The image will talk, listen and move in real time and allow people to talk as if they are in the same room.
Marcin Panek, chief executive of the company said, “Our holograms will take video- phone calls to the next level.” He says that the current hologram machines are large and expensive with heights of about 6 feet and costing thousands of pounds. But Panek predicts that, as with all technologies, the size and price of this concept will also come down, making it easily available to the masses and convenient to use.