Dr Diego Martinez Plasencia, a Lecturer in the Interact Lab at the University of Sussex's School of Engineering and Informatics, said: "This has the potential to enable new forms of interaction and collaboration with computers, liberating users from fixed, static screens and opening up whole new interactive spaces.
The mid-air display allows users to reach through it and interact with 2D and 3D objects, all the while changing shape and position to optimize visibility, facilitate interaction or flexibly adapt to single or multiple users interacting with the floating content.
While shape-changing displays and fog screens already exist, in labs at least, this is the first time the two technologies have been combined, which opens up new possibilities.
The invention, called MistForm, is being presented next week (Wednesday 10 May) in Denver, USA, at the world's biggest conference on human-computer interaction, called CHI 2017.
