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A portable light system that can digitize everyday objects
- Researchers have developed a portable light system called “PortaChrome” which can change the colour and texture of everyday objects by using ultraviolet (UV) and red, green, and blue (RGB) LEDs. Once coated by a photochromic dye, an object can become reprogrammable to display health data, customized designs and fashion statements. Changing surfaces to a multicoloured display takes less than four minutes with the UV saturating the dye while the RGB desaturates it. The latest system is eight times faster than its predecessor known as Photo-Chromeleon which used a projector as the light source.
- MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the University of California at Berkeley, and Aarhus University unlocked new possibilities for expanding the display capabilities of everyday objects, aiming at democratizing customization and enabling instant responses to dynamic variables.
- PortaChrome is equipped with textures, colors or wearable health displays with only a selection of settings in the software application. The settings will guide the device towards coloring images, patterns, texts or default functions including displaying health data, making them dynamic displays that blend with the surroundings.
- The device is composed of flexible layers of RGB and UV LEDs soldered on a textile layer, silicone diffusion layer that will disseminate and direct the light towards individual pixels and a textile base which gives the device its flexibility and adaptability to wrap around objects with varying shapes quickly.
- The researchers believe that the speed of the device could be improved further through smaller LED technology, creating a higher resolution design display with increased light intensity that can be dynamic and change colors in seconds.
- The primary goal of PortaChrome is to enable “reprogrammable surfaces” by interfacing with IoT devices, where it seeks to turn items like home appliances, mirrors, car interiors and walls into surfaces that are fully customizable and layered with real-time information.
- Zhu and her colleagues believe that their technology could be used to display health data such as heart rate, altitude, and other vital statistics on various surfaces that could be worn or used by an individual.
- Standard items such as shirts, headbands, or headphones may have patterns that can be reprogrammed to give the wearer a more dynamic look. While on tables and flat surfaces, the device could be placed on top like a placemat, and for curved objects like bottles, the light source could be wrapped around like a coffee sleeve.
- The integration of flexible light sources (UV and RGB LEDs) with photochromic pigments into everyday objects is evidence of PortaChrome providing reprogrammable surfaces with real-time customization that seamlessly integrates into daily life and offers a glimpse into the future of ‘ubiquitous displays.’
- PortaChrome technology enables the user to imagine putting on a cloak that can change either the graphics or the entire design of a shirt on display, or using car exteriors to change the appearance of a vehicle dynamically.
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