Summary

The project creates the first integrated light-field camera & light-field display system that enables the direct capturing of 3D light fields with a purpose-built camera, and visualize it in real time on a glasses-free light-field 3D display.

Light-field is an emerging concept for representing rich 3D visual information that is able to capture real world phenomena with unprecedented image quality.
A light field describes visual information as a set of light rays that pass a (sensor / display) surface, but apart from capturing the position and color of each light ray, the direction of each light rays is also recorded. Both light-field cameras and light-field display exist in the market as of today (from Raytrix and Holografika, respectively).

While light-field displays can reproduce hologram-like, full color, real time representations of anything that can be captured in light-field format, light-field cameras can capture 4D information of a subject, which can be used to reconstruct the depth of the recorded scene for every pixel, as well as to reconstruct all-in-focus images, all from a single shot.

This project is the first to combine the two technologies to generate completely new and exciting business opportunities.