Leia Display Systems designs 'Star Wars' hologram phone

Image: Glowimages

Leia Display Systems, which takes its name from sharpshooting hero Princess Leia, is working on a gadget that will create a live 3-D image of callers as they engage in telephone conversations.

The caller will sit in front of a special camera that contains two lenses, and a hologram machine will then beam the image onto a water-vapour screen.

The apparition will speak and move in sync with real time.

“We are on the frontier of technology that was imagined in movies 40 years ago,” Marcin Panek, CEO of Leia Display Systems told Britain's The Times newspaper.

“It will be as if loved ones, friends and family are standing right in front of you," he added.

Panek hopes a prototype of the device will be ready in 2015 and that the final product will be available to the general public within five years. (nh)