Polish-Flemish project from WUT awarded at the Weave-UNISONO
Polish-Flemish project from WUT awarded at the Weave-UNISONO competition
Professor Tomasz Kozacki from the Faculty of Mechatronics at the Warsaw University of Technology was among the laureates of the Weave-UNISONO competition for Polish-Flemish research teams. The professor and his team will focus their research on ultra-wide-angle and ultra-high-resolution holography.
The international partner is Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the project will be co-implemented by a team of researchers under the supervision of Peter Schelkens. The project budget on the Polish side exceeds PLN 1.3 million.
UltraHolo: ultra-wide-angle and ultra-high-resolution holography
The main objective of UltraHolo is to design and verify innovative solutions and algorithms for the capture, generation, management, and display of colour holograms with an ultra-wide angle and ultra-high resolution, supporting ultra-realistic 3D visualisation systems in education, medicine, design, architecture, and entertainment.
The emergence of holographic visualisation represents a major leap in the evolution of display technology, overcoming the fundamental limitations of traditional 3D displays such as stereoscopic, light-field, and volumetric systems. A key drawback of conventional 3D display systems is the vergence and accommodation conflict – a physiological phenomenon causing discomfort and eye fatigue. The conflict arises when visual acuity (accommodation) and the angle at which eyes converge to perceive objects (vergence) are unequal, which is a common issue in 3D display systems. Holographic visualisation eliminated this problem, ensuring truly three-dimensional visual impressions, in which accommodation and vergence occur naturally, just as they do in the real world.
Such progress not only increases the viewer's comfort but also enhances the depth and realism of visual content. The scope of holographic visualisation extends even further than the usual solution to the vergence and accommodation conflict, offering a continuous range of visual angles. In contrast, for light-field display systems, it is limited to a discrete set of angles. Additionally, ultra-wide-angle holography improves the current technology, ensuring an extended field of vision. In combination with colour and ultra-high resolution, the technology has the potential to achieve realistic visual and immersive impressions, corresponding to the human visual system. Nevertheless, the transition to ultra-wide holography remains a challenge. One of the difficulties to overcome is the need for higher resolution and larger capacity, and the associated complexity of capture, generation, processing, and rendering of the content, as well as the requirement for the use of spatial light modulators with a pixel spacing comparable to the wavelength.
The complete list of laureates is available here.