Touch , Tabletop, and Tangible Blocks

I will show two interactive prototypes: a double-precision touch device and a tangible-on-tabletop construction kit.

1. Examining Touch on the Fingerprint Level Doubles the Precision of Touch Input

I present a novel type of touch input device based on a fingerprint scanner. During each touch, it obtains not only the finger’s contact area, but also the user’s fingerprint. It uses the relative position of the fingerprint inside the contact area to reconstruct finger posture and uses that to apply a finger posture-specific correction . In a user study, these corrections improved the accuracy of touch targeting by 62%, allowing participants to acquire targets as small as 3.04mm in 95% of all cases.

1. Lumino: tangible blocks for tabletop computers based on glass fiber bundles

I demonstrate how to track objects arranged in a three-dimensional structure on an unmodifed Microsoft Surface table. Lumino is a system of building blocks. In addition to a marker, each block contains a glass fiber bundle. The bundle optically guides the light reflected off markers in the higher levels down to the table surface, where the table’s built-in camera reads it. While guiding marker images down, the bundle optically scales and rearranges them. It thereby fits the images of an entire vertical arrangement of markers into the horizontal space usually occupied by a single 2D marker. I present three classes of blocks and matching marker designs, each of which is optimized for different requirements and three demo applications. One of them is a construction kit that logs and critiques constructions. The presented blocks are unpowered and maintenance-free, keeping larger numbers of blocks manageable.

Reporting back from my first year away from MSR. Looking forward to seing you all!