You’ve probably not heard of Zebra Imaging. It is a relatively recent start-up, based in Austin Texas, which leads the world in the practical application of holography. It was founded in 1996 by three Research Scientists from the MIT Media Lab and has recently attracted a swathe of funding which will, in all probability, bring holography into practical and common usage in many areas of application.

There is strong interest from a number of industries. Once you have seen the holographs that Zebra Imaging can produce, it is easy to see why. Unfortunately for the full impact you really do have to see them and “touch” them. You can go to the web site, if you want and you might be able to get a vague idea of what Zebra Imaging can achieve, but there really is no substitute for reaching out and touching a life size holographic image of, well, a car or a brain or Mickey Mouse or whatever.

Holographs as 3D images have been curios with few real applications for several decades now, and most people have seen early examples of them in science museums. or even in gift shops that sell wall-mounted “prints” of them. Such holographs bear no real relation to what Zebra Imaging can produce. Early holographs are severely limited in terms of the viewing angle and level of definition.
The holographs from Zebra Imaging currently have a viewing angle of over 100 degrees in all directions.

The image stands out from the tile on which it is printed into the room as if it were a physical object. You can look under it, or down on it from above. And while the 100 degree angle is a little limiting, Zebra Imaging has managed to widen that angle to almost 180 degrees with its most recent technology.
In case you are wondering “why Zebra?”, the company takes its name from the technology itself.

In holographic terminology, a Zebra is a large hologram made up of many small holographic cells or “hogels”. The hogels are two millimeters square and, in the process that Zebra Imaging uses, a large array of them (each of which is unique) are printed on a flat two-foot-square tile of polymer film. The image itself is created by the reflection through the hogels of whatever light is in the room, so for the best images the appropriate lighting is required. To produce larger images you can simply put related tiles together. The result is that there is no obvious limit to how big the image can actually be.

The source data for a holograph can be any set of data from which a 3D image can be constructed, from a CAD to a video or series of shots of an object from multiple angles. The amount of data that goes into producing a holographic tile is about 1.5 terabytes – no small amount. However, given that it produces a fine grain fully faithful 3D image (think in terms of a large 3D cube of pixels) I guess the volume of data should be no surprise.

It may not be immediately obvious where the application for such holographs is unless you work in related industries that can make use of them. The military possibilities are fairly obvious in that the holograph can provide 3D maps of terrains or the buildings in a town. The automotive industry regularly builds prototype models of cars at various points of the design process, as a new model goes from concept to production. The Zebra Imaging holograph can produce a more accurate model far faster and far less expensively – thus reducing time to market. In oil exploration, detailed holographs of the underground strata and oil deposits can be produced and the model can be used to plan and improve the accuracy of drilling.

These applications are, however, only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the most impressive demonstration that Zebra Imaging can provide is the interactive use of a holographic model with a purpose designed workstation. The company is currently able to provide a holographic interface which involves a “stylus” attached to a mechanical arm. The user sits in front of the holograph, interacting with it by moving the stylus to touch the image. (When the stylus touches the image it feels as though an object has been touched). According to how the workstation is programmed, the image can then change to provide a different viewpoint of the same image. In other words what Zebra Imaging has is an early 3-dimensional interface.

The possibilities for this, once the technology advances, are enormous; from new machine interfaces to computer interfaces to game playing. It is a little early to get excited about this because the technology has a few evolutionary steps to take before any such idea becomes reality, but the recent progress of the technology has been impressive. It used to take 3 days to print a single holographic tile, but the time has been reduced to 90 minutes and, according to Robin Curle the CEO of Zebra Imaging, the development target is to bring that latency down quickly until real-time interaction is possible. Although it may be several years in the future, real-time interaction is regarded by the R&D team as a viable target.

The cost of a holographic tile is falling (it is currently in the thousands of dollars but moving towards the hundreds of dollars) and at the moment Zebra Imaging has not geared itself up for industrial production of holographs, which will inevitably bring the price down further. This is a company to watch. It is quite likely that it will see explosive growth as take-up of the technology expands.

It is rare that I get to see a technology which looks as though it will become the foundation for a whole industry, but my guess is that this one will. Holographs are going to be big business in many ways.