In recent years, as one way to apply the latest information technology to the real world, attempts have been made to enhance and extend the dining experience by projecting images onto food. For example, projection mapping on dishes and tables in restaurants is used for entertainment. In the field of projection mapping on food, research has been conducted to create retroreflective materials using transparent ingredients such as candy or agar. They were supposed to work as markers for projection mapping on food. In this research, we propose a light pipe formed from candy. Light pipes are optical elements that transmit light. The proposed light pipes can be safely used on food, and can be used as edible optical devices that provide a lighting effect to the food. The light pipes are formed by pouring candy into commercially available light pipe-shaped silicone molds or commercially manufactured tubes. Comparing the light transmission efficiency of the light pipes made of candy with that of commercial light pipes, it was found that although the performance was inferior due to air bubbles in the candy, the performance was good enough to be used in experiments for food applications. As a demonstration method for actual application to cuisine, a candle-shaped light pipe placed on a sponge cake was used as a light source to produce candle-like light without using a flame. Also, by embedding the light pipe in chiffon cake or jellies, light from a laser or LED light was introduced into the food, making the food glow with light. The effectiveness of the light pipe made of candy was thus demonstrated. © The Author(s) 2025.

In recent years, Dynamic Projection Mapping (DPM), which dynamically and adaptively projects images to suit moving and transforming objects, has attracted much attention. There is another case in which similar projection is necessary for objects under a microscope. Optogenetics can make certain cells photosensitive by genetic modification, and this can be used to input a disturbance to the cells. In particular, when the subject is in motion, the position of the cells to be stimulated changes in accordance with the motion or deformation of the subject, and the projection pattern must be changed dynamically to match this position. This requirement is exactly the same requirement as in DPM. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a projection method for microscopy with milliseconds latency. The proposed method is based on a low-latency Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) and high-speed vision system to achieve light projection that responds to deformation and movement of the object. A developed prototype system demonstrated a total latency ≤ 6.27 ms. Furthermore, dynamic projection mapping on a randomly moving target was also successfully demonstrated. © 2024 IEEE.

In recent years, technologies that enable visual representation of images in the air, such as drone art, have been gaining attention. However, drone art requires the use of hundreds of light-equipped drones, which are extremely costly and difficult to use for small-scale events. In order to realize an aerial display at low cost with fewer drones, we propose an aerial display method using dynamic projection mapping with a high-brightness projector and a screen suspended from a drone. The proposed method consists of a screen structure suitable for suspension from a drone, an infrared marker structure that enables estimation of the center of the screen, and a center estimation method based on the marker. To evaluate the proposed method, we conducted a proof-of-concept experiment using a simple laser projector and an experiment using a high-brightness projector to project an image onto a dynamic screen at a distance. The results of the experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of the aerial display with our proposed method.

In robot vision, it is often desired to measure an area larger than the field of view of the camera, so the camera tends to be mounted on a mechanical pan/tilt platform. However, such mechanisms have a non-negligible response time compared to the frame rate of the camera. In this paper, we describe what we believe to be a new method that allows arbitrary and multiple gaze directions to be observed in a frame-by-frame manner based on a resonant mirror and a lock-in pixel image sensor. In the proposed method, while the gaze direction oscillates due to the resonance mirror, the image sensor makes an exposure of several hundreds of nanoseconds every time the gaze passes through the direction to be captured, and accumulates the captured signals. A prototype system was developed using a lock-in pixel image sensor with four image storage units called taps and a resonant mirror with a resonant frequency of 12 kHz. The system achieved both arbitrary control of the gaze direction in a frame-by-frame manner, and simultaneous capturing of four images with arbitrary gaze directions also in a frame-by-frame manner. © 2024 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement.