Hidden Interface Rendering System (HIRS)

"Ambient computing should disappear when not needed."

HIRS is a computational rendering engine designed to reveal high-contrast interfaces through everyday materials like wood, fabric, and plastic. By using passive-matrix OLEDs (PMOLEDs) and intelligent optical compensation algorithms, we turn solid surfaces into invisible-by-default displays.

---

🖼 Simulation Results

The system successfully fights optical physics to render legible content through solid materials.

Fig 1: The pipeline compensating for Wood Veneer diffusion. (1) The pre-distorted signal sent to the OLED, (2) The physical emission, (3) The final legibility through the material.

---

🧱 Philosophy

Most "smart home" interfaces involve gluing a black glass rectangle onto a nice piece of furniture. We reject that.

• Hidden by Default: The interface is completely invisible until triggered.
• Material-Aware: The rendering engine knows it is shining through wood, so it boosts brightness and sharpens edges (inverse diffusion) to ensure legibility.
• Low Cost: Optimized for cheap, low-duty-cycle PMOLED hardware, not expensive transparent screens.

---

🚀 Getting Started

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Dependencies: numpy, scipy, matplotlib, opencv-python

pip install numpy scipy matplotlib opencv-python

Running the Simulation

Visualize the complete optical transport pipeline:

python3 simulation/simulator.py

This will run the engine with a default Wood Veneer material model and produce the visualization shown above.

---

🏗 System Architecture

The project is organized into research-grade modules:

Module	Description
display/	Hardware Abstraction: Models PMOLED constraints (perfect blacks, limited brightness).
materials/	Optical Database: Physics models for Wood, Fabric, Paper, etc. Simulates diffusion & attenuation.
parallel_engine/	The Core: Application of Inverse Diffusion (unsharp masking) and Brightness Amplification.
rendering/	UI Toolkit: Primitives (HighContrastRect, DotGrid) designed to survive blur.
interfaces/	Logic: efficient state machines for the hidden/reveal lifecycle.

👉 Read the Technical Guide for detailed architecture and extension instructions.

---

🏆 Key Features

1. Parallel Brightness Amplification: Spatially spreads light energy to fight material attenuation.
2. Inverse Diffusion: Pre-sharpens content based on the specific material's sigma (blur factor).
3. State Management: "Fade-in/Fade-out" logic ensuring the interface feels discovered, not toggled.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

---

Created by Pranav Dwivedi for the Ambient Computing Research Group.