Amazing Technology Invented By MIT - Tangible Media

Ron Czapala

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/incredible-table-can-instantly-replicate-3d-objects-193627222.html?vp=1

With seemingly only marginal increases in most pieces of technology, it's not often that you come across something that legitimately makes you say "wow." And we would've never expected to say that about a table. But leave it to the MIT Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab to come up with something we've never seen before. It's called the inForm, and as Tangible explains, it can, "render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way." Basically, the table has a large network of pins, cabling, and actuators underneath, all hooked up to a computer.

Peter KG6LSE

Looks Like the kids at MIT were inspired by a old kids toy
http://bitshare.cm/post/14135509207/a-life-size-pin-art-wall-shelf-makes-cleaning-up-fun

GordonMcComb

It's a nice concept, but not new. Xenotran has built much higher resolution versions of these for the military. Theirs, demonstrated about 10 years ago at some conferences and written up in various publications at the time, uses pins that raise and lower. Much slower than MIT's version, but orders of magnitude more resolution. They use sand as a top layer to show terrain, but the pins provide the contour. Discussed here:

http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/interview-with-xenotran-founder-drderrick-page/123593