The role of computers in the modern office has tended to split our activities between virtual interactions in the realm of the computer and physical interactions with real objects that have been part of the traditional office infrastructure. This paper discusses a variety of scenarios we have implemented in which the physical world can be invisibly and seamlessly augmented with electronic tags in order to connect physical objects with virtual representations or computational functionality. We demonstrate the utility of linking physical objects to electronic services and actions that are naturally associated with their form (e.g., a dictionary and a web-based translation service). Unlike previous work in this area, we have focused on uniquely combining four inexpensive technologies with off-the-shelf applications, everyday objects, and computational devices. KEYWORDS: RFID tag, ubiquitous computing, tangible interface, physical UI, phicon, augmented reality. INTRODUCTION Six years ag...

We have created a system for identifying people based on their footstep force profiles and have tested its accuracy against a large pool of footstep data. This floor system may be used to transparently identify users in their everyday living and working environments. We have created user footstep models based on footstep profile features and have been able to achieve a recognition rate of 93 % using this feature-based approach. We have also shown that the effect of footwear is negligible on recognition accuracy.

This paper introduces a novel interface for digitallyaugmented cooperative play. We present the concept of the "athletic-tangible interface," a new class of interaction which uses tangible objects and full-body motion in physical spaces with digital augmentation. We detail the implementation of PingPongPlus, a "reactive ping-pong table", which features a novel sound-based ball tracking technology. The game is augmented and transformed with dynamic graphics and sound, determined by the position of impact, and the rhythm and style of play. A variety of different modes of play and initial experiences with PingPongPlus are also described. Keywords tangible interface, enhanced reality, augmented reality, interactive surface, athletic interaction, kinesthetic interaction, computer-supported cooperative play. INTRODUCTION When an expert plays ping-pong, a well-used paddle becomes transparent, and allows a player to concentrate on the task -- playing ping-pong. The good fit of grasp is vit...

. Many novel applications take on the task of moving the personal computer away from the desktop with the approach to merge digital information with physical space and objects. These new applications have given rise to a plethora of notions and terms used to classify them. We introduce amplified reality as a concept complementary to that of augmented reality. To amplify reality is to enhance the publicly available properties of persons and physical objects, by means of using wearable or embedded computational resources. The differences between the two concepts are discussed and examples of implementations are given. The reason for introducing this term is to contribute to the terminology available to discuss already existing applications, but also to open up for a discussion of interesting design implications. Keywords: amplified reality, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, wearable computing, embedded vs. superimposed properties, private vs. public 1 Breaking away f...

In this thesis, I designed and implemented a system to track and characterize acoustic impacts on large interactive surfaces. This involved choosing the appropriate sensors, designing the hardware, and finally developing algorithms to determine the location of a tap. The hardware was designed so that low-noise, high quality signals were produced so that some of the problems that caused inaccuracies in the position determination were eliminated. Various algorithms were designed and implemented to best locate the position of the tap. Finally, an application for the acoustic tap tracker was designed.