Took me a while to finally post this, but have you seen this video?! If you haven’t and you’re at all interested in what the future may hold for you and yours, you should watch this clip. It’s a touchable, fully animated HOLOGRAM of raindrops (and a baby elephant, and more) that you can actually FEEL in your hand.

Without diluting the quality of the hologram (which is absolutely amazing in its own right), a specially designed device called the “Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display” basically blasts accurate little ultrasonic waves (“acoustic radiation pressure fields”) from above the hologram itself and creates the sensation of pressure on the user’s hand. Led by Hiroyuki Shinoda and his group at the Shinoda Lab, the University of Tokyo researchers recently displayed this sweet piece of kit at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans. For more info, check out the one page synopsis of the project here (PDF).

Many congrats to the Shinoda Lab. It’s 2009 and they’ve created holograms with haptic feedback. Just imagine…