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Dr. Edward Buckley, Light-Blue-Optics's Biz-Dev VP and co-founder has decided to leave the company. He's heading for Alces Technology, a new company based in Jackson, WY. Alces is developing a 1D MEMS-based microdisplay technology for high resolution laser-based projection applications.

Here's a short quote we got from Edward today: "I feel very privileged to have founded a company which grew from a demonstration on an optical bench at Cambridge University in 2003, all the way through to a hugely successful product launch at CES 2010. It has been very exciting watching the pico projector industry grow and I look forward to watching it fulfil its potential."

Back in 2009, we posted an interview with Dr. Edward. We wish him luck in his new venture!

Young Optics say that global shipments of pico-projectors reached 437,791 in the first half of 2010. 46% of these were LCoS based mobile phones offered by Chinese white-box vendors (this is somewhat surprising, isn't it?), and 10% were DLP-based handset models. Total 2010 stand-alone pico-projector shipments are estimated at 900,000. In 2011, these will grow to over 2 million units.

Prices for pico projector modules are expected to drop to US$50 by the end of 2010, which is still higher than clients' expectations, Young Optics said, adding that module prices are expected to drop below US$30 in 2012.

The company says that the market for projector cameras will grow significantly in 2011, judging from orders from clients. The market of pico projectors for handsets will pick up in 2012.

Researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have created a new 3D hologram table that can be viewed from 120-degrees (although the researchers say that they can take this to 360-degrees). They have used convex mirrors and an impressive range of 96 (!) pico-projectors (they are using 3M's old MPro-110 projectors) in order to create this.

The images themselves are low resolution, and only 5 centimeters high.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $50,000 SBIR phase 1 grant for Mezmeriz, to develop their carbon-fiber MEMS laser pico projector. This is actually a continuation of an earlier grant of $150,000 from earlier this year.

4D Dynamics has released a new pico-projector based consumer 3D scanner called PicoScan. The scanner is a Canon 1000D DSLR bundled with a pico-projector and 3D scanning software (based on the Mephisto scan engine). The idea is that you can take photos around an object and the software turns it into a 3D model. The projector is used for radiometric calibration. We're not sure, but the projector seems to be either an AAXA P2 or an Adapt 305.

The PicoScan is available now for $1999.

Syndiant is introducing a new display controller ASIC for pico-projector - the SYA1022. The new ASIC provides more functionality, better power efficiency and lower production cost - and is also smaller than the previous controller (the SYA1012). Syndiant is already shipping samples to several companies. Production quantities will be available in September 2010.

The controller combines the control and frame buffer in a small 9x9 mm package so no external memory is required. Additionally, the SYA1022 supports all of Syndiant’s LCOS display panels, from 854x480 pixel Wide-VGA up through and including Syndiant’s industry leading SYL2061 1024x600 pixel Wide SVGA panel.

Remember the LuminAR project? It just won $15,000 from Audi, as part of their Tony Stark Innovation Challenge. The money will be used to further development of this interesting project. Hopefully it'll help these guys get someone interested in actually commercializing this. Here's the video showing what's LumiAR is all about:

LuminAR is a project from MIT that "reinvents the traditional incandescent bulb and desk lamp, evolving them into a new category of robotic, digital information devices". The LuminAR Bulb combines a Pico-projector, camera, and wireless computer in a compact form factor. It has a gestural user interface, and just-in-time projected information.