Optolabe

This page started with a chapter of a science fiction story, this particular chapter having been written in 1998 and published on the web at that time.

The author of the story hopes that the optolabe could be developed and become a useful peripheral for the OLPC laptop for use in conjunction with a miniature camera.

Introduction

An optolabe is a hand held computer vision input device designed to allow a user to signal three dimensional movements to a computer, including such things as pitch, roll and yaw.

Is it well known in the computer vision field?

Not at present.

What does this optolabe invention look like? Is it electronic?

No, it is not electronic, it is just a solid object. It could be made of plastic or wood or whatever, as long as it is the right shape and the right colours.

The optolabe is of overall size of about a bit larger than a hand. It consists of six blue spheres of different sizes supported on a neutral coloured frame, maybe beige or grey, with some neutral coloured discs as well. The idea is that from whatever angle a computer vision system sees the optolabe, some of the spheres are seen as blue discs, since a sphere seen from any angle gives the appearance of a disc. The discs in the optolabe are so that the spheres that at any time are on the side of the optolabe away from the computer vision system are occluded, either in whole or in part.

What happens if a blue sphere is only partly occluded?

Then it presents a blue shape of some sort to the computer vision system. If the blue shape that is received is not a disc, then it is ignored.

Have you got it working?

Well no.

The documentation would include a number of short modules dealing with well established matters, such as three dimensional geometry and the mathematics of rotations; and also the basic technology of existing computer vision systems.

There would be a module clearly stating the theory of the optolabe, the module clearly being marked as research work that is not as yet part of accepted theory.

There could be research modules so that people try to work on part of the development of the optolabe.

Historical note

This page started with a chapter of a science fiction story, the particular chapter having been written in 1998 and published on the web at that time.

The author of the story hopes that the optolabe can be developed and become a useful peripheral for the OLPC laptop for use in conjunction with a miniature camera.

This wiki page started with an archiving of a copy of the original published web page.