Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Supporting collaborative work using interactive tabletop

PhD ThesisCollaborative working is a key of success for organisations. People work together around tables at work, home, school, and coffee shops. With the explosion of the internet and computer systems, there are a variety of tools to support collaboration in groups, such as groupware, and tools that support online meetings. However, in the case of co-located meetings and face-to-face situations, facial expressions, body language, and the verbal communications have significant influence on the group decision making process. Often people have a natural preference for traditional pen-and-paper-based decision support solutions in such situations. Thus, it is a challenge to implement tools that rely advanced technological interfaces, such as interactive multi-touch tabletops, to support collaborative work. This thesis proposes a novel tabletop application to support group work and investigates the effectiveness and usability of the proposed system. The requirements for the developed system are based on a review of previous literature and also on requirements elicited from potential users. The innovative aspect of our system is that it allows the use of personal devices that allow some level of privacy for the participants in the group work. We expect that the personal devices may contribute to the effectiveness of the use of tabletops to support collaborative work. We chose for the purpose of evaluation experiment the collaborative development of mind maps by groups, which has been investigated earlier as a representative form of collaborative work. Two controlled laboratory experiments were designed to examine the usability features and associated emotional attitudes for the tabletop mind map application in comparison with the conventional pen-and-paper approach in the context of collaborative work. The evaluation clearly indicates that the combination of the tabletop and personal devices support and encourage multiple people working collaboratively. The comparison of the associated emotional attitudes indicates that the interactive tabletop facilitates the active involvement of participants in the group decision making significantly more than the use of the pen-and-paper conditions. The work reported here contributes significantly to our understanding of the usability and effectiveness of interactive tabletop applications in the context of supporting of collaborative work.The Royal Thai governmen

Development platform for elderly-oriented tabletop games

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Contextual memory in group workspaces

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129).This thesis presents the design and implementation of MemTable, an interactive touch table that supports co-located group meetings by capturing both digital and physical interactions in its memory. The goal of the project is to demonstrate hardware and software design principles that integrate recording, recalling, and reflection during the life cycle of a project in one tabletop system. MemTable's hardware design prioritizes ergonomics, social interaction, structural integrity, and streamlined implementation. Its software supports heterogeneous input modalities for a variety of contexts: brainstorming, decision making, event planning, and story-boarding. The user interface introduces personal menus, capture elements, and tagging to help identify the context of meeting interactions. It records the history of the implicit and explicit events during meetings. A preliminary evaluation is presented of user feedback on the capture and recall features. A longitudinal design plan outlines a framework for future work that integrates review and reflection functions into a comprehensive system. Additional features are presented for browsing and searching prior meeting data, visualizing long term work patterns, and integrating meeting data with external web services.by Seth E. Hunter.S.M

Touching 3D data:interactive visualization of cosmological simulations

Visualisatie richt zich op het aanvullen van de zintuigen en het voorstellingsvermogen van wetenschappers zodat ze hun gegevens beter kunnen begrijpen. Dit is een interactief en iteratief proces waar informatierepresentatie, interactieve verkenning en het nemen van beslissingen een grote rol spelen. Het doel is om door middel van dit iteratieve proces inzicht te verkrijgen in het probleem en de onderliggende gegevens totdat er voldoende begrip is. Bij deze visuele verkenning is een hoge mate van interactiviteit essentieel voor het op eem efficiënte manier behalen van dit doel omdat het de gebruiker dan de mogelijkheid geeft om nieuwe ideëen uit te proberen, terugkoppeling te verkrijgen en de verkenning op basis daarvan bij te sturen. In dit proefschrift rapporteren we over ons onderzoek naar de uitdagingen voor natuurlijke interactie en de verkenning van gegevens die gerepresenteerd worden in drie dimensies. In dit proefschrift hebben we de visualisatie van astronomische gegevens als centraal voorbeeld genomen van een toepassingsdomein waarin de nadruk ligt op op drie-dimensionale puntwolkgegevens van numerieke simulaties, zoals simulaties van galactische dynamica of hoog-dimensionale informatie uit deeltjessystemen. We introduceren twee intuïtieve en efficiënte interactie-technieken voor de verkenning van gegevens in drie dimensies. De eerste techniek helpt gebruikers te navigeren in drie dimensies en de tweede techniek geeft gebruikers de mogelijkheid om eenvoudig een subset van deeltjes te selecteren. Daarnaast integreren we deze twee technieken in een visueel-analytische computerapplicatie om zo wetenschappers te helpen nuttige informatie te extraheren en inzicht te verkrijgen

Dynamically Tunable Plasmonic Structural Color

Functional surfaces which can control light across the electromagnetic spectrum are highly desirable. With the aid of advanced modeling and fabrication techniques, researchers have demonstrated surfaces with near arbitrary tailoring of reflected/transmitted amplitude, phase and polarization - the applications for which are diverse as light itself. These systems often comprise of structured metals and dielectrics that, when combined, manifest resonances dependent on structural dimensions. This attribute provides a convenient and direct path to arbitrarily engineer the surface\u27s optical characteristics across many electromagnetic regimes. But while many of these plasmonic systems struggle to compete with the efficiency of pre-existing technologies, the ability to tune plamsonic structures post-fabrication is a distinct advantage which may lead to novel devices. In this work, I will summarize fundamental and applied aspects of tunable plasmonic systems as applied to the visible and infrared regimes. I will demonstrate how liquid crystal may be used to dynamically and reversibly tune the plasmonic resonances of metallic surfaces on a millisecond time scale. For the visible, this results in dynamic color-changing surfaces capable of covering the entire RGB color space and which is compatible with active addressing schemes. I will then show the application of these concepts to infrared absorbers through the use of liquid crystal and phase change materials. The later of these devices can find use in infrared data/image encoding, thermal management and camouflage. Together, these works explore the limits of tunable plasmonic systems and the novel devices they might lead to

A Multi-functional Touch Panel for Multi-Dimensional Sensing in Interactive Displays

This thesis presents a flexible graphene/polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF)/graphene sandwich for three-dimensional touch interactivity. Here, an x-y plane touch is sensed using graphene capacitive elements, while force sensing in the z-direction is by a piezoelectric PVDF/graphene sandwich. By employing different frequency bands for the capacitive- and force-induced electrical signals, the two stimuli are detected simultaneously, achieving three-dimensional touch sensing. Static force sensing and elimination of propagated stress are achieved by augmenting the transient piezo output with the capacitive touch, thus overcoming the intrinsic inability of the piezoelectric material in detecting non-transient force signals and avoiding force touch mis-registration by propagated stress. As a capacitive signal is important for force touch interpretation, optimization algorithms have been developed and implemented. With correlated double sampling (CDS) and spatial low-pass filtering (SLPF) based techniques, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the capacitive touch signal is boosted by 15.6 dB, indicating improved detection accuracy. In terms of the readout speed, fixed pattern and random pattern related down-sampling techniques are applied, giving rise to reductions in both readout time (11.3 ms) and power consumption (8.79 mW).China Scholarship Counci

Brainstorming und Mind-Mapping im Multi-Device-Kontext. Konzeption und prototypische Implementierung für Multi-Touch-Tabletop und Smartphone

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt die Konzeption und prototypische Implemen­tierung einer Anwendung zur elektronischen Unterstützung von Brainstorming- und Mind-Mapping-Sitzungen an einem multitouchfähigen Tabletop mit Smart­phones. Während der Tabletop durch seine große, horizontal ausgerichtete Oberfläche die kollaborative Erstellung und Strukturierung von Ideen in Gruppen unterstützt, werden Smartphones einen zusätzlichen Eingabekanal zur Verfügung stellen sowie Individualarbeit fördern. Somit wird zunächst einerseits die Motivation für die Verwirklichung einer Anwendung zum Brainstorming und Mind- Mapping am Tabletop und andererseits das Potential einer Ergänzung eines sol­chen Systems durch zusätzliche private Geräte im Sinne der Multi-Device-Inter­aktion erläutert werden. Um eine geeignete theoretische Basis zu schaffen, wird darüber hinaus ein detaillierter Überblick über die Entwicklung der Tabletop­technologie in den letzten Jahren und den dabei zentralen Forschungs- und Pro­blemfeldern im Kontext der Entwicklung von Benutzerschnittstellen für Tabletopsysteme gegeben. Zudem werden schließlich auch im Rahmen der Arbeit relevante Aspekte der Multi-Device-Interaktion skizziert. Diesem theoretisch ausgerichteten Teil der Arbeit folgt schließlich eine Beschreibung der Entwicklung des Anwendungskonzepts und der dabei formulierten Anforderungen und Designzielen, welche in Form eines ersten, papierbasierten Prototypen visualisiert werden. Aufbauend auf diesen konzeptuellen Überlegungen wird schließlich die konkrete technische Umsetzung der Anwendung Multi/Touch/Device Mind­ Mapper in Form eines High-Level-Prototypen auf Basis des MT4j-Frameworks (Tabletop) und des Android-Betriebssystems (Smartphone) beleuchtet. Eine Dis­kussion dieses finalen Prototypen und erster praktischer Erfahrungen sowie ein Ausblick auf Erweiterungsmöglichkeiten des Systems und über den Rahmen der Arbeit hinaus gehende Fragestellungen schließen die Arbeit ab. Schlussendlich kann gezeigt werden, dass die im Rahmen des Anwendungskonzept definierten Anforderungen mit Hilfe der verwendeten Frameworks bis auf wenige Ausnahmen erfolgreich umgesetzt werden konnten. Darüber hinaus kann der Anwendung durch die aus dem Testbetrieb gewonnenen Erkenntnisse eine grundsätzli­ che Praktikabilität attestiert, ebenso konnten einige Ansatzpunkte für weitere Verbesserungen und Tests aufgedeckt werden