SBIR Deployable Intelligent Projection Systems for Training (Phase 1)

Principal Investigator: Henry Fuchs, Greg Welch
Funding Agency: Renaissance Science Corporation
Agency Number: P1107

Abstract
Renaissance Sciences Corporation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Night Readiness, LLC propose to develop new “intelligent” projector units (IPUs) that cooperate to create a single seamless wide-area (panoramic) image as part of a deployable visual training system for multiple viewers. The IPUs outwardly look like conventional digital projectors, but when casually arranged together in a set that projects in a common direction, will automatically learn their respective geometric and photometric relationships, and then continually and automatically estimate and correct geometric and photometric errors to maintain a single, seamless, high-fidelity image for multiple distinct viewers. This concept is depicted in Figure 1 (sketch by Andrei State). Currently available projector technologies do not offer user-friendly, multi-tiled displays that self-calibrate and compensate for errors resulting from using multiple projectors. Instead, detailed and expensive manual labor is needed to achieve such display arrangements, which is not only inefficient, but also cost-prohibitive when needed in deployable and changing settings.