Physical interaction design DH2400

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There seems to be a LivingSurface application in Täby Centrum!

My kids played with this for almost two hours yesterday. It seems to be quite a simple installation, based on an overhead video projector sending pictures to a white mat (on which kids run) and a video camera, most probably running a multi-touch table software, to detect the various moving spots (aka kids). It reacts more to kids who have darker clothes. There are some soft toys at one side, unrelated to the projection but giving a nice "play" and "kids" context.


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There are several scenes (balloons, flowers, water) and some of them are better designed, in that kids realize faster that the they are interactive. In one scene there are some butterflies that run away from the kids, but these are somewhat too small to notice. The water scene makes waves when kids "kick" the water, which are nice and probably challenging to do from a computer graphics standpoint, but not easy to notice when you're running around (still fun to play with once noticed). The balloons and flowers work best, as kids see them rushing away as they run around.



This looks like a commercial installation, quite reliable. It became a bit less reactive as the closing hour was approaching, not sure whether that was on purpose or it became de-calibrated. A great installation all in all, kids clearly enjoyed it.

I just want to give everyone a tip about the course site for Microcomputers in products; www.md.kth.se/mip. Here you can find lots of useful links, crash courses and info about detectors, motors, robots and so on. Enjoy!

Living surface is an interactive video sculpture installation. Acting as a 3D screen, it projects moving video objects while playing an appropriate sound. Video and sound changes depending on how the user moves though the projected area, giving a realistic feeling of interaction with some environment or object.

The combination of projecting video objects on great areas with allowing multiple users interacting wiht it directly and without any external devices, makes this project interesting when looking at intuitive interaction.

MEGAPHONE 3001, is a multiplayer real-time collaborative telephony platform for use on large screens in public space such as sports arenas and concert venues, and movie theaters. It isn’t a mobile application, but a phone system that users can call in to. The phone system reacts to buttons and voice to control a screen near the user. It can be used for information, advertising, and is currently setup as a series of games.

Developed at Tisch ITP, (http://itp.nyu.edu/sigs/)


Next project is called Cubit and is “an exploration in tangibility of pixels”. The technology used in this project is interactive surfaces which can sense touch, multiple contact points, allowing for multi-finger dual-hand forms of interaction. The software visualizes and represents the data emulating physical characteristics that align with tactile expectations of the user. The interesting thing about this project is how a user can interact directly with an application without using external devices like a keyboard or mouse. Technology between virtual systems and users are fading providing pure communication. Another interesting aspect of the project is that many users are allowed to use the same machine.

Developed at De Montfort University, UK in collaboration with University of Tampere, Finland

One of the projects which we found interesting was an eye tracking system. It allows a user to control an application by reading the movement of his or her eyes, and analyzing where focus lies. This type of interaction can be both positive and negative. It can both accelerate and make more efficient use of computer. The system also gives an opportunity to control computer applications for functionally disabled (for example stroke patients) who can’t use modern technology. The negative side of the eye tracking system can be errors which might occur from for example human reflexes (someone walks into the room and we look at them, what happens on the screen?).

I found a lot of interesting projects involving Wiimote, the remote control from Nitendo Wii game console on the following site http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/ .
In order to realize such projects you don't need a Wii, what is needed is a Wiimote that costs aroung 400kr, and a sensorbar that costs around 100kr.