Build Your World and Play In It

Update: “Build Your World and Play In It…” won Best Student Paper @ ISMAR 2010!

Next week we will be presenting our latest work at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2010) in Seoul, South Korea. ISMAR is the main augmented reality conference.

Novel display and interaction technology has enabled projecting digital content onto complex physical surfaces, freeing content from the confines of a limited, flat monitor display. These projection based interfaces are becoming increasingly feasible for use in ubiquitous display and interaction as projectors decrease in size, cost and power consumption. Everyday, passive objects can be transformed into interactive display surfaces through the use of novel projector-camera systems based on Spatial Augmented Reality. Walls, desks, foam core, clay models, wooden blocks, sand pits, among other materials, can be turned into interactive displays allowing for a new range of interaction possibilities. By acquiring a full 3D model of the display surface, we can interact directly with the world around us.

Abstract

We present a novel way of interacting with everyday objects by representing content as interactive surface particles. Users can build their own physical world, map virtual content onto their physical construction and play directly with the surface using a stylus. A surface particle representation allows programmed content to be created independent of the display object and to be reused on many surfaces. We demonstrated this idea through a projector-camera system that acquires the object geometry and enables direct interaction through an IR tracked stylus. We present three motivating example applications, each displayed on three example surfaces. We discuss a set of interaction techniques that show possible avenues for structuring interaction on complicated everyday objects, such as Surface Adaptive GUIs for menu selection. Through an informal evaluation and interviews with end users, we demonstrate the potential of interacting with surface particles and identify improvements necessary to make this interaction practical on everyday surfaces.

For more details see the paper: pdf
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