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Minority Report it is not, but Masatoshi Ishikawa – namesake of Tokyo University’s renowned Ishikawa Lab – brought us one step closer to the future when he recently invited Japanese press to witness the lab’s newest creation: a projection system that can track and display an image on a moving object.

The implied uses for this technology are endless, and include the ability to someday interact with a Smartphone interface projected onto your own hand, or watch Three’s Company reruns on your ceiling fan or something.

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As it stands, the system can currently project an image onto any moving object, as well as produce tactile sensation through a companion device that shoots ultrasonic waves onto the moving surface. In layman’s terms, it punches things with sound lasers.

There’s only one catch: right now, the system requires a massive ceiling-mounted unit that houses the necessary equipment, which, in the Yomiuri Shimbun video here, clicks and whirs disturbingly like an MRI machine gone rogue, drowning out reporters’ voices and possibly irradiating everyone in the room.

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Ishikawa Labs says the technology as is could be used commercially to display batch information on products moving through an assembly line.

Here’s a video demonstration (with the sound cleaned up) from Ishikawa Labs’ Youtube channel:

Source: Yomiuri Online

Images/video via YouTube IshikawaLabs