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Showing posts with the label Latest Inventions

Disney's 'Magic Bench' Puts You in the Picture with Animated Figures

A new "Magic Bench" designed by Disney Research lets you interact with endearing animated characters — and no special glasses or headsets are required. Instead, the complete environment — the seat, the sitter and the cartoon humanoid animals — is mirrored on a screen opposite the bench, making it possible for others to watch the scene unfold.  How does the illusion work? A camera and sensor capture images and gather depth information about physical objects — the bench and the person — that algorithms integrate with the 3D animations, the researchers wrote in a study. Meanwhile, haptic sensors built into the bench deliver vibrations that are synchronized to animated actions on the screen, creating the illusion that the animated figures are occupying real-world space next to the user.   "Our mantra for this project was: hear a character coming, see them enter the space, and feel them sit next to you," Moshe Mahler, principal digital artist at Disney R...

E. C. George Sudarshan In A Tryst With Physics

E.C.G. Sudarshan T he physicist Hans Bethe once said, “There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it.” In the world of science, every so often we come across visionaries, ‘magicians’ in the words of Bethe, who dare to perceive the world in ways no one else has before. E.C. George Sudarshan is one of them.  Born in Kottayam in 1931,   Ennackal Chandy George Sudarsan   studied at the CMS College and later at the Madras Christian College, the University of Madras and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. ECG (Ennackal Chandy George) Sudarsan had been nominated nine times for Nobel Prize in physics. Sudarsan rewrote Albert Einstein's theory through the discovery of Tachyon particles in quantum optics. Famous scientist Vaidyanath Misra was also with Sudarsan in his eff...