NOTE: This will also be the chapter's election meeting. The election will be held at 6:25, just before the presentation part of the program. IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Central New England Chapter Tuesday, November 12, 2002 Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM Program: 6:30 PM True, Spatial 3D Actuality's Perspecta Platform Design and Applications Presented by Gregg Favalora Founder, CTO, and VP of Platform Technology Actuality Systems, Inc. ABSTRACT Mr. Favalora will present an overview of his firm's 3D display technology, Perspecta, which is a combination of software and hardware that generate spatial, 360-degree- viewable, auto-stereoscopic imagery. Applications include medical imaging, MCAD, military visualization, and oil & gas exploration. The agenda includes a demo of the world's most advanced 3D display; a technical discussion of how it operates (software, hardware, and optics); and a hands-on demonstration of several applications. Perspecta is a large glass sphere that creates a 10"-diameter three-dimensional image, resulting from the world's record in spatial display resolution of 100 million voxels. The Perspecta system is a combination of hardware and software. The hardware, known as a "multiplanar volumetric display," creates 3D imagery using persistence of vision. First, proprietary algorithms and an embedded graphics processing engine start with a 3D data set -- such as a picture of the human skull -- and slice it into 198 radially-disposed planes. Next, using a Texas Instruments DLP(tm) projector at 5,000 frames per second, these images are projected onto a diffusing screen rotating at 730 rpm. The result is a 3D image, refreshed at 24 volumes per second, which is visible 360 degrees around. Other 3D display technologies use methods such as liquid- crystal-based shutter goggles, lenticular displays, or other rotating-screen systems. Actuality's Perspecta platform is the world's highest-fidelity spatial 3D display. Goggles aren't required to see the 3D effect, and it offers full parallax. Furthermore, Perspecta is based on open standards like OpenGL, so it seamlessly integrates into a host of existing applications for molecular modeling and MCAD. Actuality Systems Inc. was founded in 1997 by Mr. Favalora to commercialize 3D display technology he had been researching since 1988. The company was founded with Rob Ryan, the former CEO of Ascend Communications, which was acquired by Lucent in 1999 in a deal valued at $24 billion. After three years developing proofs-of-concept and market research, Actuality got its formal start in January 2000 when it raised $1.5 million in seed funding from VCs and angel investors around the world. After two years of steady development, the firm has recruited as CEO, Cameron Lewis, who was one of the founders of McAfee.com and ran e-commerce at Netscape Corporation. With Cameron at the helm, Actuality is now shipping Perspecta 1.5 to customers at universities, government research laboratories, and the U.S. military. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Gregg Favalora is co-founder, CTO, and VP of Platform Technology at Actuality Systems, Inc. Gregg began researching 3D displays in 1988. He graduated from Yale in 1996 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a master's in engineering sciences from Harvard in 1998. Gregg is a winner of the BFGoodrich / National Inventors Hall of Fame's Collegiate Inventor's Competition, is a $10k winner of the MIT $50k "Entrepreneurship Competition", and is a member of Technology Review magazine's "TR100," a group of 100 of the top technologists under the age of 35. Gregg's research interests include spatial 3D displays, holographic video, and neuromorphic engineering. He holds two patents and has several pending in the fields of 3D display and optical networking. MEETING INFORMATION The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet on Tuesday, February 12, 2002, at Wellesley High School at 6:00 PM for informal discussions and for the formal presentation between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. The group will have a no-host dinner afterwards at Bertucci's, where more conversations can take place with the guest speaker. The meetings are open to the general public, and all are welcome at the dinner afterwards. For more information contact Mike Brenner at 781-271-3806 or at the Chapter email address: info@robotics-boston.org (hotlink: mailto:info@robotics-boston.org). DIRECTIONS From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16 west. From the junction of Routes 9 and 16, follow Route 16 (Washington Street) west past the Wellesley Hills commuter rail station (within walking distance of the school), then turn left onto Rice Street. Wellesley High School is on the left. Parking is available in a lot just beyond the school. For a web map showing the location of Wellesley High School, go to the Yahoo map site at http://maps.yahoo.com/ and enter the following information in the indicated locations: Address: 50 Rice St City, State or ZIP: Wellesley, MA The star marker is misplaced slightly to the south. Imagine it about 1 cm toward the top of the map at Rice St. For more information about our Section and Chapter, visit our web site at our new registered domain URL http://www.robotics-boston.org/