Enrique Canessa

Gaia Fior, Carlo Fonda, Enrique Canessa

The facilitation of STEM education can be enhanced by the provision of opportunities for learners to gain a better understanding of science through the utilization of tangible and visual examples. The objective of this work is to present an account of our experiences and activities carried out in Italian schools with this novel approach. The selection of projects and experiences discussed --in which students develop a range of core competencies such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, experimentation, prototyping, communication and problem-solving; include tangible complex 3D printed structures, large micro-controller board replicas and the visualization of wind dynamics and tiny invisible elementary particles among others. These hands-on experiences demonstrate the benefits on the use of digital fabrication technologies implemented within a FabLab for STEM learning.

Livio Tenze, Enrique Canessa

A new extended version of the altiro3D C++ Library -- initially developed to get glass-free holographic displays starting from 2D images -- is here introduced aiming to deal with 3D video streams from either 2D webcam images or flat video files. These streams are processed in real-time to synthesize light-fields (in Native format) and feed realistic 3D experiences. The core function needed to recreate multiviews consists on the use of MiDaS Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which allows to extract a depth map from a single 2D image. Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing techniques are applied to improve the overall performance of the extended altiro3D Library. Thus, altiro3D can now treat standard images, video streams or screen portions of a Desktop where other apps may be also running (like web browsers, video chats, etc) and render them into 3D. To achieve the latter, a screen region need to be selected in order to feed the output directly into a light-field 3D device such as Looking Glass (LG) Portrait. In order to simplify the acquisition of a Desktop screen area by the user, a multi-platform Graphical User Interface has been also implemented. Sources available at: https://github.com/canessae/altiro3D/releases/tag/2.0.0

Enrique Canessa, Livio Tenze

The MORPHOLO C++ extended Library allows to convert a specific stereoscopic snapshot into a Native multi-view image through morphing algorithms taking into account display calibration data for specific slanted lenticular 3D monitors. MORPHOLO can also be implemented for glasses-free live applicatons of 3D video streaming, and for diverse innovative scientific, engineering and 3D video game applications -see http://www.morpholo.it