An official website of the United States government
A Flying Light Speck, FLS, is a miniature sized drone configured with light sources to illuminate different colors and textures. A swarm of FLSs illuminates complex 3D multimedia shapes in a fixed volume, a 3D display. An FLS is a mechanical device. Its failure is the norm rather than an exception, causing a point of an illumination to go dark. In this paper, we use reliability groups with dark standby FLSs to minimize the duration of time a point remains dark. This study makes two novel contributions. First, it compares a centralized and a decentralized algorithm to form groups, demonstrating the superiority of the centralized technique. Second, it detects when the dark standby FLSs may obstruct the user's field of view and relocates them with minimal impact on their provided benefit.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on April 2, 2026
Techniques to Conceal Dark Standby Flying Light Specks
A Flying Light Speck, FLS, is a small drone configured with light sources to illuminate different colors and textures. A swarm of FLSs illuminates complex 3D multimedia shapes in a fixed volume, a 3D display. An FLS is a mechanical device. Its failure is the norm rather than an exception, causing a point of an illumination to go dark. In this paper, we use reliability groups with dark standby FLSs to minimize the duration of time a point remains dark. We introduce three techniques to prevent a dark standby FLS from obstructing the user’s field of view, FoV. All three move the FLS out of the user’s FoV. One technique, Suspend:Closest, maximizes the utility of a standby FLS while preventing it from obstructing the user’s FoV.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10612532
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for Computing Machinery, ACM
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
- ISSN:
- 1551-6857
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Flying Light Speck Failure Handling Standby FLSs Quality of Illumination
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
One may construct a 3D multimedia display using miniature drones configured with light sources, Flying Light Specks (FLSs). Swarms of FLSs localize to illuminate complex 3D shapes and animated sequences. This requires FLSs to measure their relative pose (distance and angle) accurately. A challenge is how to do this when the sensors used by FLSs have a blind range that prevents them from quantifying their relative pose. Our technique, Swazure, requires FLSs to cooperate to compensate for their sensor's blind range. It implements {\em physical data independence} by abstracting the physical characteristics of the sensors, making point cloud data independent of the sensor hardware. The size of an FLS relative to the minimum distance between points of a point cloud is an important parameter. It may result in potential obstructions that prevent Swazure from quantifying relative pose. We present two techniques, move obstructing and move source, to address this limitation. Our experimental results show the superiority of the Move Obstructing technique.more » « less
-
Group formation is fundamental for 3D displays that use Flying Light Specks, FLSs, to illuminate shapes and provide haptic interactions. An FLS is a drone with light sources that illuminates a shape. Groups of G FLSs may implement reliability techniques to tolerate FLS failures, provide kinesthetic haptic feedback in response to a user’s touch, and facilitate a divide and conquer approach to challenges such as localizing FLSs to render a shape. This paper evaluates four decentralized techniques to form groups. An FLS implements a technique autonomously using asynchronous communication and without a global clock. We evaluate these techniques using synthetic point clouds with known optimal solutions and real point clouds. Obtained results show a technique named Random Subset (RS) is superior when constructing small groups (G ≤ 5) while a different technique named Closest Available Neighbor First (CANF) is superior when constructing large groups (G ≥ 10).more » « less
-
Hu Min-Chun; Liu Jiaying; Kim Munchurl; Zhang Wei (Ed.)Group formation is fundamental for 3D displays that use Flying Light Specks, FLSs, to illuminate shapes and provide haptic interactions. An FLS is a drone with light sources that illuminates a shape. Groups of $$G$$ FLSs may implement reliability techniques to tolerate FLS failures, provide kinesthetic haptic feedback in response to a user's touch, and facilitate a divide and conquer approach to challenges such as localizing FLSs to render a shape. This paper evaluates four decentralized techniques to form groups. An FLS implements a technique autonomously using asynchronous communication and without a global clock. We evaluate these techniques using synthetic point clouds with known optimal solutions and real point clouds. Obtained results show a technique named Random Subset (RS) is superior when constructing small groups (G$$\leq$$5) while a different technique named Closest Available Neighbor First (CANF) is superior when constructing large groups (G$$\geq$$10).more » « less
-
Awaysheh Feras; Srivastava Gautam; Wu Jun; Aloqaily Moayad (Ed.)This study evaluates the accuracy of three different types of time-of-flight sensors to measure distance. We envision the possible use of these sensors to localize swarms of flying light specks (FLSs) to illuminate objects and avatars of a metaverse. An FLS is a miniature-sized drone configured with RGB light sources. It is unable to illuminate a point cloud by itself. However, the inter-FLS relationship effect of an organizational framework will compensate for the simplicity of each individual FLS, enabling a swarm of cooperating FLSs to illuminate complex shapes and render haptic interactions. Distance between FLSs is an important criterion of the inter-FLS relationship. We consider sensors that use radio frequency (UWB), infrared light (IR), and sound (ultrasonic) to quantify this metric. Obtained results show only one sensor is able to measure distances as small as 1 cm with a high accuracy. A sensor may require a calibration process that impacts its accuracy in measuring distance.more » « less
