[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8Md7sw2Lc?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]

“This is a lighting system, called Lighty. There’s a group of robotic lights on the ceiling, and their orientation and brightness can be controlled through this interface.”

“This feels just like Photoshop. To specify which places you want bright or dark, all you need to do is color in the corresponding areas.”

In this system, the interactive pen display is used to paint the room in light or darkness, with a camera placed in the ceiling returning the results in real time to the display. By coloring in white with the brush tool areas of the interior can be brightened, and by using black they can be darkened. This intuitive interface simplifies the controlling of complex lighting systems.

“Brightening a room up is easy, but combining dark and bright areas is hard for people to think about. The main feature of this system is, the computer does the hard work of calculation. So, the user can get a good result simply by coloring in the screen.”

The brightness distribution levels input to the computer are rendered visible as contours. In this 1/12 scale prototype, there are 12 lights, which are moved on two axes by gimbals, to create accurate levels of brightness distribution. The optimal arrangement is calculated by parallel processing with a GPU, which makes it possible to reflect the result immediately.

“Currently, we’ve created test environments on a miniature scale. From now on, we intend to install this system in actual home environments.”

“Of course, Lighty could also be used for large halls and stages. But we think that, in the future, it’ll be usable in ordinary homes as well.”

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