N. 20, March - April 2005 
IP & RTD in practice 
Patent of the month 
 
FogScreen: walking through a screen

Have you ever imagined being able to walk through a 3D, immaterial, dry fog screen? This new revolutionary technology developed by the Finnish researcher Ismo Rakkolainen and Professor Kerri Palovuori at Finland's Tampere University of Technology, enables people to walk through a thin, flat, translucent screen. This device creates the illusion that people can walk through walls, and all kinds of images can be displayed on it. The key component of the screen is a laminar, non-turbulent airflow, whereby streams of air move in parallel to the flow axis without mixing. The innovative screen uses dry fog made from dry ice or liquid nitrogen. The effect produced is like a floating image, which is completely dry as regards any person or thing that comes into contact with it.

The FogScreen embodies the features of an ordinary screen in terms of projection properties, and has additional important functions like enabling objects to appear and move in thin air, eliminating the problems of normal stray light, as long as it is weaker than the projectors, working with a minimum distance of 2 meters between the projector and the screen, allowing images to be displayed by a projector located in front of or behind the screen, and all contained in a robust and easy transportable unit.



The world premiere exhibition of FogScreen took place at the Finland Science Fair in Turku, in October 2002.

The range of potential applications for the FogScreen is wide and includes projecting images in museums, art exhibitions, advertising, stage shows, entertainment expositions, nightclubs, interactive multimedia presentations, gaming applications, theatre productions, etc.

Many international journals, magazines, news reports and conferences have presented the FogScreen's key features, and a prototype has also been installed in the Vapriikki museum in Tampere, Finland.

In order to develop, manufacture and commercialize products based on the FogScreen technology, FogScreen Inc. was founded in 2003 and is managed by Ismo Rakkolainen, the company's Research and Development Director.

International FogScreen patents are pending.

Clients interested in such a technology can purchase various versions of the screens, with optional enhanced features, developed during Rakkolainen's latest research activities at the Tampere University of Technology.

Links:

For more information about FogScreen Inc., visit www.fogscreen.com

For the FogScreen Interactive video, please click here

For the FogScreen patent abstract, please click here