If pop-ups and holograms don’t quite cut the mustard for story books these days, Disney Researchhas come up with an innovative idea – a smartphone projector system that allows the user to movean animated, digital character over surfaces in the real world. Offering an even greater level of interaction than other recent augmented reality projects, such as the AR music poster we looked at last week, this project features projected images that react to the surface they're projected onto.

Dubbed ‘HideOut’, the technology has beencreated by Karl Willis at Disney Research in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania,and was presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in Barcelona this month. By using invisible ink-markers which are picked up byan infra-red camera, the projected images can be guided through the story book to completea multitude of activities, and is seen by its creators as an important step towards the seamlessinteraction between the digital and physical worlds.

For now, the concept is an interesting amalgamation of a computer game and a book, but the teamhope smartphones embedded with projectors will become something of a norm in the future.Willis suggests the technology could be used to browse digital photos and files projected on a wall,augment theme parks with digital characters or bring another dimension to board games withcharacters leaping from the board.