Getting Physical

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Getting Physical Saul Greenberg University
of Calgary Canada
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Ubiquitous Computing

• Mark Weiser (Xerox Parc)
• A less-traveled path I call the invisible its
  highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded,
  so fitting, so natural, that we use it without
  even thinking about it.
• Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices
  per person per office, of all scales (from 1"
  displays to wall sized).This is different from
  PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your
  fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing
  that does not live on a personal device of any
  sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
• Invisible Everywhere Computing
• invisible tiny, embedded, attachable
• everywhere wireless, dynamically configurable,
  remote access, adapting

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Ubicomp is Situated Computing

• Makes use of simple shared context
• space
• time
• proximity
• affordances

• Participation in the context
• is physical
• is out here with us
• is in many small and large places, including
  trivial ones

Extracted from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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Extracted from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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Technology trends for Ubicomp

• Displays
• very small (inches) to very large (walls)
• Processors
• cheap, small, dedicated, microprocessors
• Low Power
• small batteries, solar (?)
• Wireless
• Wireless ethernet, infrared, mobile standards,
  Bluetooth (in-room), in-building, metropolitan
• Operating systems
• Linux on a chip, Windows CE,
• Packaging
• non-conventional devices

Modified from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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Extracted from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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Extracted from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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ParcTab

• Mobile hardware
• infrared
• room-sized cells
• location information
• Device
• small case with belt clip, ½ size of PDAs
• touch sensitive 128x64 pixels display
• 3 finger-operated mechanical buttons (chorded)
• piezo-electric speaker
• low power needs ( 1 week between charges )
• Can be used in either hand
• rotates display

Extracted from Mark Weisers UbiqCom web site
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Tangible Media

• Hiroshi Ishii (MIT)
• Tangible Bits gives physical form to digital
  information, seamlessly coupling the dual worlds
  of bits and atoms.
• Tangible User Interfaces employ physical objects,
  surfaces, and spaces as tangible embodiments of
  digital information.
• These include foreground interactions with
  graspable objects and augmented surfaces,
  exploiting the human senses of touch and
  kinesthesia.
• Background information displays use "ambient
  media" -- ambient light, sound, airflow, and
  water movement-- that communicate
  digitally-mediated senses of activity and
  presence at the periphery of human awareness.

Adapted from Tangible Media Group web site
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Pinwheels
Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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SenseTable

• A system for tracking the positions and states of
  multiple objects wirelessly on a flat surface.
• Objects can be equipped with various controls --
  dials or buttons -- which can be monitored in
  real-time.
• . When coupled with a projector, the system can
  display information about the objects on or near
  the objects themselves.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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Bottles

• Bottles opening and closing bottles is the
  primary mode of interaction with digital contents
  e.g., opening it tells a story
• Music bottles movement and uncorking of the
  bottles controls the different sound tracks and
  the patterns of colored light that are
  rear-projected onto the tables translucent
  surface.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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Triangles

• When the pieces connect together, they can
  trigger digital events. These events can
  influence the progress of a non-linear story, or
  allow users to organize media elements in order
  to create their own story space.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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TouchCounters

• Computational tags track the usage of physical
  objects.
• TouchCounters sense activity through magnetic,
  acceleration, and infrared sensors, and indicate
  their status on bright LED displays.
• TouchCounters can be networked to a web server
  that generates use histograms for each object.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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HandScape

• A vectorizing digital tape measure for digitizing
  field measurements, and visualizing the volume of
  the resulting vectors with computer graphics.
• Using embedded orientation-sensing hardware, it
  captures relevant vectors on each linear
  measurements and transmits this data wirelessly
  to a remote computer in real-time.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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Personal Ambient Display

• Small, physical devices worn to display
  information to a person in a subtle, persistent,
  and private manner.
• Ambient information is displayed solely through
  tactile modalities such as heating and cooling,
  movement and vibration, and change of shape.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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InTouch

• Force-feedback technology is employed to create
  the illusion that people, separated by distance,
  are interacting with a shared physical object.
• When one of the rollers is rotated, the
  corresponding roller on the other distant object
  rotates in the same way. Two people separated by
  distance can then play

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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PingPong Plus

• features a "reactive table" that incorporates
  sensing, sound, and projection technologies.
  Projectors display patterns of light and shadow
  on the table bouncing balls leave images of
  rippling water and the rhythm of play drives
  accompanying music and visuals.

Extracted from Tangible Media Group web site
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Marble Answering Machine

• Incoming voice messages are physically
  instantiated as marbles.
• The user can grasp the message (marble) and drop
  it into an indentation in the machine to play the
  message.
• The user can also place the marble onto an
  augmented telephone, thus dialing the caller
  automatically.

Durrell Bishop
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Bench

• two cold steel benches located in different
  cities. When a person sits on one of these
  benches, a corresponding position on the other
  bench warms, and a bi-directional sound channel
  is opened. At the other location, after feeling
  the bench for "body heat," another person can
  decide to make contact by sitting near the
  warmth. Initially the sound channel is distorted,
  but as the second party lingers, the audio
  channel clears.
• --summarized by Ishii and Ullmer

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby at the RCA
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Ambient Light Display

• light reflection from water onto ceiling

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Roomware

• Computer-augmented room elements
• like doors, walls, furniture (e.g. tables and
  chairs) with integrated information and
  communication technology.

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land
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Roomware

• Dynawall

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land
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Roomware

• CommChair

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land
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Roomware

• ConnecTable
• By moving multiple ConnecTables together, they
  can be arranged to form a large display area.
  Integrated sensors measure the distance between
  the ConnecTables and initiate the automatic
  coupling of the displays

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land
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Roomware

• InteracTable
• touch-sensitive plasma-display (PDP) is
  integrated into the table top
• Border for leaning

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land
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• Phillips Intelligent Information Surfaces

Tokens
From the Philips Lime Video CD
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Designing out of the box

• The problem
• programming / designing with physical devices is
  hard
• circuit design (electrical engineering)
• microprocessor interface to digital/analog
  devices
• wire interface (serial, USB, wireless, IR)
• wire protocol
• connection/disconnection/intermittent
  connectivity
• software to use devices
• maintenance and extensibility
• simple things take a long time to do
• most people dont bother

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Solution 1 Interdisciplinary team

• Works, but
• Still takes time
• When one of the teamleaves, knowledge islost
• systems hard tomaintain extend

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(No Transcript)
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Solution 2 Hack existing devices

• Programmable Embodied Agents (Kaminsky et al)
• hacked Microsoft Actimates

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Solution 2 Hack existing devices

• Programmable Embodied Agents (Kaminsky et al)
• Arm position -gt quantity
• Squeezing hand/leg -gt counting
• Movement-gt task progress

• Proxy for other person
• squeeze hand, others hand goes up)
• Event monitoring
• Signal document is printing, then complete
• Barney Email biff

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Solution 3 Phidgets

• Physical Widgets
• simple, easy to program devices and
  component-based software with well-defined API
• building blocks for physical interfaces
• analogous to GUI widgets

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Phidget Examples

• GlabServo
• Control 1 or 2 servo motors
• Glab Powerbar
• Control power state of outlets on a power bar
• Glab InterfaceKit
• 8 simple input and outputs plus 2 sensors
• A constructor kit
• Glab ProximitySensor
• Returns how close something is to it
• Glab MotionDetector
• Periodically returns the amount of motion in a
  space

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Related areas

• Mobile Computing
• Augmented Reality
• Context-aware computing
• Reactive Environments
• Ubiquitous Media
• Cooperative Buildings