AquaTop display: interactive screen on a water surface

Developed by a team of engineers from the University of Tokyo, AquaTop Display is a projection system that uses water as an interactive screen, allowing users to put their hands “inside the screen” and experience a different sensation.

Presented at the latest edition of the Siggraph computer graphics conference 2013, AquaTop Display is a projection system developed by engineers at the Tokyo University of Electronic Communications, specifically by the Koike laboratory, offering interaction like that of a traditional interactive screen, but in the water.

AquaTop display allows you to project different contents, from spreadsheets or email to movies or games using water as a surface, although the water is covered with an opaque powder and uses a depth sensor and camera based on Microsoft Kinect to detect the movements that the user makes on the water.

One of its innovations is that AquaTop Display has a dedicated operating system to recognize the user's touch movements, both on the surface of the water and within it, so that it is possible to put your hands into the water to drag an image with the “drag and drop water” function or eliminate it by sinking your hand over the object reflected in it.

The system also has two waterproof speakers and a computer that controls the camera with Kinect and infrared sensor., the projector and the pigmentation of the water (that turns white) to control hand movement, and even add a Led lighting system.

For now, AquaTop Display is a prototype, Although new developments to integrate more intuitive and immersive user interfaces predict its early commercialization in the market..