PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - Not all inventions that come from Picatinny Arsenal personnel win awards for their military utility and the Orbital Rendersphere is a prime example.
Instead, at the most recent Maker Faire in New York, the Orbital Rendersphere is the winner of multiple awards for its creativity and ingenuity.
"The Orbital Rendersphere is a spherical surface display measuring four feet in diameter and utilizes four vertical LED strips spaced 90 degrees apart to create a persistence of vision that spins at 450 rpm (rotations per minute)," said Matthew Clemente, a mechanical engineer and the only Picatinny employee who worked on the project.
"With the assistance of microcontroller and Wi-Fi router, the Rendersphere has the capability of displaying scrolling text, images, and live video at 30 frames per second as it rotates."
Most point-of-view (POV) displays only render a twodimensional image and often accomplish it by rapidly moving a single row of LEDs along a linear or circular path, Clemente explained.
"The effect is an image perceived as a whole by the viewer as long as the entire path is completed during the visual persistence time of the human eye," he said.
"The result of this effect gives the illusion of the image floating in mid-air."
The Orbital Rendersphere began as an idea for entry into the 2013 Red Bull Creation Contest, a national innovation competition.
Along with Clemente, a team was formed consisting of Jordan De Liso, a mechanical engineer that did fabricating work, Edwin Park, a software engineer who worked on coding, Nick Rapport, another software engineer and woodworker, and Travis Jones, a network engineer, woodworker, and fabricator.
"As part of that competition, Red Bull sent us a number of LED strips and asked us to create something cool out of it," Clemente said.
"We decided on the idea of a POV display and started building it only a few days before the contest deadline. This led us to a crazy weekend of working like madmen that resulted to nothing working correctly."
Despite a failed first attempt, the team continued working on the idea.
"We had the bones of the display put together, and came together as a team and decided the idea was too good to let die. So, we set our sights on Maker Faire instead," said Clemente.
The Maker Faire is an event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself mindset by exhibiting arts, crafts, engineering, and science projects in interactive exhibits and presentations.
During this year's New York Maker Faire, the Orbital Rendersphere won 5 Blue Ribbons. Four ribbons were awarded for editors' Choice and 1 Educators Choice.
"It was a great experience to have people coming up all weekend, looking puzzled, then understanding what we built and smiling," Clemente recalled.
"At one point a little boy come over and just started screaming, 'oh my gosh,' over and over as if his mind was blown. That kid's mentality is inspiration."
Even with their success it has garnered, the team has already set their sights on upgrading their creation.
"We are working to increase the number of LED's on the display, as well as improve the graphics displayed through the software code," Clemente said.
"There is also discussion amongst team members to scale it up, making it even bigger and better for next year's Maker Faire, provided we find sponsors."
Clemente added his team would also like to see the device used to showcase technology at local schools and community centers to help inspire the next generation of young minds.
"It's a great feeling to watch how excited the people, both young and old, were when they saw what it is, what it does, and more so, that they can interact with it."
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U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center
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