MAKE them small and make them smart. That is the dictum today's road warriors have given to projector manufacturers - and they have obeyed.

So, what has emerged since last year is a new generation of image casters called pico projectors that weigh under 200g, have batteries as an alternative power source and fit in the palm of the hand.

While bulky projectors weighing over 2kg are still around, they mostly take pride of place in large auditoriums or halls to make sure that audiences in the thousands can see large and clear images.

Changing work patterns and office structures are driving the demand for the new-generation mini image casters.

Where corporate structures are concerned, companies have either flattened heirarchies or shrunk work groups following the global economic crunch.

Today, project groups typically comprise three or four people compared to dozens previously, said Lee Leong Chye, who heads Dell's product group for industrial design and engineering.

'With such a small workgroup, you no longer need to invest in a larger, more expensive projector,' said Leong Chye.

The fact that more tech-savvy consumers are working on the go has fuelled the need for portable devices, said Optoma's general manager for Asia-Pacific, Telly Kuo.

Feedback from its customers shows that 'mobility is one of the main market demands'.

Add to that the fact that today's tech-savvy mobile workers also demand flexibility in their projectors: They want to be able to plug a host of devices to their projectors - from a USB drive to a TV to an iPod.

Such connectivity options require space and hence a bigger machine.

So, how have projector makers dealt with the quandary?

To cater to this new breed of customers, projector makers have squeezed every bit of technology and used the lightest materials to deliver the smallest projectors possible.

At Dell, for instance, its industrial design experience group thought outside the box.

'Traditional projectors have connectivity ports built into the main casing,' said Adrian Wong, one of the industrial design consultants who worked on Dell's pocket projector, the MP109s.

'What we did was simply integrate the connectivity ports with the power cable instead of putting them on the box,' he added.

Designers also looked at cellphone and MP3 player technologies to shrink the size of their projectors.

'One of the things that we decided to go for is the use of capacitative buttons instead of the traditional mechanical push buttons that can significantly add to the weight and size of the final product,' said Adrian.

Capacitative buttons are touch-sensitive.

At 3M, designing a miniaturised projector required the development of proprietary new optical components, optical materials and lighting systems.

One of the key components used in 3M's projectors is its multi-layer optical film, said Dr Andrew J. Ouderkirk, a corporate scientist at its projection systems department.

'This film is made from hundreds of very precisely generated microscopic layers. It allows us to use a very bright and efficient projector design that gives higher performance than any other system,' said Andrew.

As miniaturisation technology gets better, it would not be surprising to see the convergence of projection technology in everyday widgets.

Perhaps engineers can come up with a watch that doubles as a projector one day.

adli@sph.com.sg

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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