You can actually touch these 3D holograms (Wired UK)

Designers at the Digital Nature Group at Japan’s University of Tsukuba stated that they were able to develop the 3D images by using scanners, mirrors, and rapid-speed, high-intensity lasers.

The researchers say they will continue their experiments in the hopes that one day they will be able to create real, life-like holograms which can be interacted with in HD.

To solve this problem the Japanese researchers created plasma voxels using femtosecond lasers instead.

A lot of work is currently going into creating Star Wars-esque 3D holograms that can be seen by the naked eye without wearing 3D glasses, and now researchers have found a way to make safe, touchable mid-air displays using femtosecond lasers. These holograms are of its unique kind because it is said to be interactive. Laser-induced plasma could be used to create new generations of augmented reality (AR) devices, as well as user interfaces capable of appearing to float in mid-air.

Laser-induced plasma holds several advantages over other means of producing similar displays, researchers report.

This leads to the formation of the pixels which respond to touch when the pulses are interrupted. The amount of power has been set at the right level so that you do not burn yourself upon touching it, resulting in the generation of images that rely on femtosecond lasers which one can actually interact with using touch. However, this time, researchers have come up with a hologram that doesn’t affect humans adversely, when they touch it. However, the team of Japanese researchers has developed a system that fires laser pulses at a high frequency called femotosecond lasers.

The research is detailed in the open-access paper entitled “Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds: Aerial and Volumetric Graphics Rendered by Focused Femtosecond Laser Combined with Computational Holographic Fields”.

In a video revealing the technology, the touches are shown being used to tick a virtual checkbox, to change the word “hate” to “love” and to switch between an image of a heart and a broken heart.

The team will be showing off its invention at the Siggraph 2015 conference in Los Angeles in August.

For starters, it doesn’t require physical matter arranged and suspended in air to emit light, and it doesn’t require wires and structures that obstruct the line-of-sight.