Scientists Invent Holograms You Can Touch

Get your hands on the latest in holographic tech — or if you want to be pedantic about it, volumetric displays. Using a clever system of elastic bands and rapidly projecting images, a team of researchers in Spain have created three-dimensional virtual objects that you can physically manipulate, allowing you to directly poke and prod at them without the need of a boring controller. As detailed in a new paper that's yet to be peer-reviewed and will be presented at the CHI 2025 conference this month in Japan, the device works with intuitive hand gestures that most people are familiar with from using touchscreens, such as a pinching motion to zoom in and out, or tapping and swiping. And like a little stickman, you can even traverse across a digital landscape by performing a walking motion with two fingers, as seen in a video demonstration. "We are used to direct interaction with our phones, where we tap a button or drag a document directly with our finger on the screen — it is natural a ... Read full article.