Software architectural support for tangible user interfaces in distributed, heterogeneous computing environments

This research focuses on tools that support the development of tangible interaction-based applications for distributed computing environments. Applications built with these tools are capable of utilizing heterogeneous resources for tangible interaction and can be reconfigured for different contexts with minimal code changes. Current trends in computing, especially in areas such as computational science, scientific visualization and computer supported collaborative work, foreshadow increasing complexity, distribution and remoteness of computation and data. These trends imply that tangible interface developers must address concerns of both tangible interaction design and networked distributed computing. In this dissertation, we present a software architecture that supports separation of these concerns. Additionally, a tangibles-based software development toolkit based on this architecture is presented that enables the logic of elements within a tangible user interface to be mapped to configurations that vary in the number, type and location of resources within a given tangibles-based system

Casier: Structures for Composing Tangibles and Complementary Interactors for Use Across Diverse Systems

International audienceCasiers are a class of tangible interface elements that structure the physical and functional composition of tangibles and complementary interactors (e.g., buttons and sliders). Casiers allow certain subsets of interactive functionality to be accessible across diverse interactive systems (with and without graphical mediation, employing varied sensing capabilities and supporting software). We illustrate examples of casiers in use, including iterations around a custom walk-up-and-use kiosk, as well as casiers operable across com- mercial platforms of widely varying cost and capability

Cartouche: Conventions for tangibles bridging diverse interactive systems

We describe an approach for a class of tangible interaction elements that are applicable across a broad variety of interactive systems. These tangibles share certain physical, visual, tagging, and software conventions, while fostering diversity in many aspects of design and function. Building on related techniques using paper and graspable artifacts as interactive embodiments of digital information, we propose several fixed and free parameters, present illustrative examples and applications, and discuss the resulting design space. Copyright 2010 ACM

LARGE SCALE PROBLEM SOLVING USING AUTOMATIC CODE GENERATION AND DISTRIBUTED VISUALIZATION

Abstract. Scientific computation faces multiple scalability challenges in trying to take advantage of the latest generation compute, network and graphics hardware. We present a comprehensive approach to solving four important scalability challenges: programming productivity, scalability to large numbers of processors, I/O bandwidth, and interactive visualization of large data. We describe a scenario where our integrated system is applied in the field of numerical relativity. A solver for the governing Einstein equations is generated and executed on a large computational cluster; the simulation output is distributed onto a distributed data server, and finally visualized using distributed visualization methods and high-speed networks. A demonstration of this system was awarded first place in the IEEE SCALE 2009 Challenge