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You can now touch stuff in videos?

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Researchers at MIT have developed technology that now enables people to actually reach out and touch, and even manipulate, objects in videos. The researchers are a part of the university’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the technology they have created is known as Interactive Dynamic Video (IDV).

The new technology will allow a user to reach into a video and touch or poke or even move particular objects in the video. The technology depends, of course, on various algorithms as well as standard video cameras. The IDV can measure the vibrations coming off of something and then can create a simulated video in which the user can virtually interact with any of the objects projected in the video simulation.

The researchers believe that their work will assist film makers in creating more realistic virtual realities and may even help such practical professions, such as architecture, to use the technology to determine if buildings and structures are as structurally intact and sound as they were designed to be. The researchers also hope to be able to predict how certain objects will interact with forces and energy so as to be adaptable to video content.

In order for them to make the interaction as realistic as possible, the researchers need to further study frequencies and energy vibrations and to discover certain modes that will adapt to the video. It is the manipulation of these frequencies and vibration modulations that will allow the researchers to create the simulations and enable the objects in them move by touch.

Detection of the energy frequencies will enable the researchers to see exactly how  a particular objects moves. They are looking to make virtual things react as realistically as possible. It seems they eventually look to blur the line between actual reality and virtual reality. Somewhat like coming in to watch a baseball game on television and walking in on an instant replay and not knowing if you are watching the actual game or not yet.

During the research, the scientists were actually able to move and manipulate objects within the simulated videos.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay