A volumetric display for visual, tactile and audio presentation using acoustic trapping

Science-fiction movies portray volumetric systems that provide not only visual but also tactile and audible three-dimensional (3D) content. Displays based on swept-volume surfaces^1,2, holography³, optophoretics⁴, plasmonics⁵ or lenticular lenslets⁶ can create 3D visual content without the need for glasses or additional instrumentation. However, they are slow, have limited persistence-of-vision capabilities and, most importantly, rely on operating principles that cannot produce tactile and auditive content as well. Here we present the multimodal acoustic trap display (MATD): a levitating volumetric display that can simultaneously deliver visual, auditory and tactile content, using acoustophoresis as the single operating principle. Our system traps a particle acoustically and illuminates it with red, green and blue light to control its colour as it quickly scans the display volume. Using time multiplexing with a secondary trap, amplitude modulation and phase minimization, the MATD delivers simultaneous auditive and tactile content. The system demonstrates particle speeds of up to 8.75 metres per second and 3.75 metres per second in the vertical and horizontal directions, respectively, offering particle manipulation capabilities superior to those of other optical or acoustic approaches demonstrated until now. In addition, our technique offers opportunities for non-contact, high-speed manipulation of matter, with applications in computational fabrication⁷ and biomedicine⁸.