"Star Wars" inspired volumetric display produces 3D images that float in mid-air

The technology – which is reminiscent of the system used by R2D2 in the original Star Wars film to project an image of Princess Leia in distress – is a so-called volumetric display.

Unlike a holographic display, which scatters light only at a 2D surface, a volumetric display has little scattering surfaces scattered throughout a 3D space - the same space occupied by the 3D image.  This means that if you are looking at the image you're are also looking at the scatters, and for this reason, a volumetric image can be seen from any angle.

In a paper published in Nature, Professor David Smalley, who headed up the project explained that he and his team have devised a free-space volumetric display platform, based on photophoretic optical trapping, that produces full-colour, aerial volumetric images with 10-micron image points by persistence of vision.

"We're using a laser beam to trap a particle, and then we can steer the laser beam around to move the particle and create the image," said undergrad co-author Erich Nygaard.