UCF Researcher Bringing 3-D TV Back from the Dead
One UCF researcher may be on the
brink of bringing 3-D- TV back from the dead.
Gone are the goofy glasses required
of existing sets. Instead, assistant professor Jayan Thomas is working on
creating the materials necessary to create a 3-D image that could be seen from
360 degrees with no extra equipment.
“The TV screen should be like a
table top,” Thomas said. “People would sit around and watch the TV from all
angles like sitting around a table. Therefore, the images should be like
real-world objects. If you watch a football game on this 3-D TV, you would feel
like it is happening right in front of you. A holographic 3-D TV is a feasible
direction to accomplish this without the need of glasses.”
His work is so far along that the
National Science Foundation has given him a $400,000 grant over five years to
develop the materials needed to produce display screens.
When 3-D TVs first came on the
market in 2010, there was a lot of hype and the market expected the new sets
would take off. Several broadcasters even pledged to create special channels
for 3-D programming, such as ESPN and the BBC.
But in the past year, those
broadcasters have canceled plans because sales have lagged and the general
public hasn’t adopted the sets as hoped. Some say that’s because the television
sets are expensive and require bulky equipment and glasses.
Thomas’ approach would use new
plastic composites made with nanotechnology to make the 3-D image recording
process multitudes faster than currently possible. This would eliminate the
need for glasses.
Thomas and his colleagues have
developed the specific plastic composite needed to create the display screens
necessary for effectively showing the 3-D images. That work has been published
in the journals Nature and Advanced Materials.
Thomas has joint appointments in the
UCF NanoScience Technology Center, the Center for Research and Education in
Optics and Lasers (CREOL) and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
The NSF CAREER Award is the agency’s
most prestigious award for junior faculty.
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