Halo’s Cortana enters the real world with this Internet appliance. [Jarem Archer] has developed an incredible “holographic” home for Cortana of Halo and Windows fame. The display isn’t really a hologram, it uses the age-old Pepper’s ghost illusion. A monitor shows onto 3 angled half mirrored panels. This creates a convincing 3D effect. Cortana herself is a 3D model. [Jarem’s] partner offered gave Cortana her moves by walking in front of dual Kinect depth-sensing cameras. This motion capture performance drives the 3D Cortana model on the screen.
The brain behind this hack is the conventional Windows 10 Cortana voice assistant. saying “Hey Cortana” wakes the device up. To make the whole experience much more interactive, [Jarem] added a face detection video camera to the front of the device. When a face is detected, the Cortana model turns toward the user. even if several people are viewing the device, it would seem as if Cortana was “talking to” one person in the audience.
The cherry on top of this hack is the enclosure. [Jarem] 3D printed a black plastic stage. An Arduino drives RGB LEDs whenever Cortana is activated. The LEDs project a blue glue that works well with the Pepper’s ghost illusion. The result is a project that looks like something Microsoft might have cooked up in one of their research labs.
We’ve covered several Pepper’s ghost hacks over the years. It’s a easy effect to pull off. given the best illumination conditions, it looks great!