HP offers tour of your digital future

(PhysOrg.com) -- Never mind that HP Corporate keeps breaking off rudders. Never mind nobody even takes HP’s ability to stay open in the future for granted any more. And, please, never mind that HP, pre-Meg, was to turn its back on hardware and concentrate on software, a decision that is now up in the air. Just ignore the uncertainty and enjoy the view of four device concepts. HP’s creatives are still barreling ahead in their own rowboats while everyone outside HP clucks at the mothership.

A team at HP was asked to help DreamWorks conceptualize technology of the future. The upcoming movie Real Steel with Hugh Jackman inspired HP’s winning ideas; as a not so sneaky preview, HP is showcasing four of its Real Steel technology concepts of what computing will look like in the future. The samples remind us that computing can always find room for beautiful forms for computing.

An HP ThruScreen is HP's way of allowing a user to manipulate and interact with real and virtual objects behind a transparent adjustable screen. You can rotate the screen to place objects behind the screen or below the screen

The HP Volume Jet is a 3-D printer crafted as a future iteration of the HP DesignJet 3D. The DreamWorks team and the HP creatives built a Volume Jet prototype but it did not make the final cut.

The HP Curve from top to bottom is an "immersive" design that combines a flat interactive surface with a vertical transparent display and on the side a back to the future inkwell concept of a stylus perched and ready for writing. It is a large tabletop size device that looks far more like a Milan-inspired furniture item, which may explain the HP promotional message of the HP Curve being "designed to be built into a room."

The HP Flex, with a see-through screen, is a flexible laptop that the actors in the movie use to control the robots during battle. The Original Noisy Boy Controller was imagined as a dual display flexible laptop that can be used even when closed. Working with the DreamWorks team to create the right look for the concept, the final design turned out to be a clam shell-shaped controller, stylized to match the robot Noisy Boy.

It’s a large desktop surface when it is flat, a notebook when open, and a tablet when loaded, with "ergonomic" grip power.

HP has enjoyed a long relationship with DreamWorks. HP and DreamWorks Animation formed a technology partnership in 2001. The partnership between DreamWorks and HP has extended both to the studio’s infrastructure and business divisions.

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