Find yourself through interaction

A visitor experience at London’s Science Museum has been given an interactive boost, utilising Calibre UK’s PremierViewProHD Image Warp Processors to warp and blend incoming video signals. The “Who Am I?” exhibit, which explores brain science and genetics, opened in 2000 but has recently added the “Me3” interactive element; divided into Exhibit, Threshold and Backdrop zones.

Calibre image processing lies at the heart of the Threshold zone, which forms an entrance to the gallery featuring moving coloured particles that are constantly projected onto the floor of a long catwalk with seamless projection. Visitors are led along the floor by the colours and, as they approach the wall at the end, a concealed camera captures the infrared reflections given off by each individual. These are then translated into a personal, particle-based image that runs down the wall and onto the floor, mimicking each body’s movement in real time.

Five Panasonic 6000 series projectors are positioned out-of-sight and driven at angles to fulfil the project brief of seamless imaging moving along a horizontal and then a vertical surface. This created a challenge for systems integrator Sarner, according to the company’s head of engineering, Chris Hawes.

“At the time we tendered for the project, there was no solution on the market capable of achieving a seamless vertical and horizontal video wall with 180° interaction,” Hawes explains. “Fortunately, by connecting PremierViewProHD Image Warp Processors from Calibre to each of the projectors, we were able to warp the projected images and blend them back into shape to create a single, continuous image. Visitors are able to walk within 1.9m of the wall without affecting the projection at all.”

The projection of coloured particles continues in the Central Exhibit zone of Me3, where a large interactive table brings visitors together to investigate what makes them unique. This zone is linked to Backdrop - a large (18 x 4m) videowall that uses the data input by visitors on the tables to create unique images. A further four Panasonic 6000 projectors are used here, but the requirement that they should be out-of-sight obliged Sarner to position them off-axis. Calibre’s PremierViewProHD image warp processors ensured the image was not distorted.

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