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Intelligent Systems Lab Project: Tangible User-oriented Multimedia Multi-user Interactive Table (TUM²IT)

Participants

• Birte Carlmeyer
• Mathias Lindemann
• Viktor Richter
• Thomas Schöpping

Supervisors

• Eckard Riedenklau
• René Tünnermann

Motivation

To control several multimedia devices you need a bunch of different input devices.

• Different multimedia devices have need of different input devices.
• Each input device can be used by only one person in one place.
• There is no possiblity for multiple people to control multiple multimedia devices with only one single input device.

Application Scenario

• Some friends meet to watch movies and listen to music.
• Peter brings his portable harddisk along.
• Pamela wants to listen to her favourite music, stored on the Secure Digital Memory Card of her mobile phone.
• Tim got a movie on a Digital Versatile Disc.
• Gregory knows the most hilarious, amazing video of the universe on youtube.com.

The nice meeting turns out to become a battle for the remote control.
The only possibility to de-escalate such a commonly known situation is to create an input-device, which can be used by everyone with ease.

Objectives

The project goals are

• creating a single input device to control several multimedia devices
• simple usability, even without reading the manual
• usage of uncommon storage devices, which only identify the carrier and link to the data (like a key or a mobile phone)

Description

TUM²IT is the abbreviation for

Tangible         The user manipulates physical objects.
User-oriented     The system behaves as the user expects, not the other way around.
Multimedia       Multiple mediadevices can be controled by this single platform.
Multi-user        Multiple people can use it simultaneously.
Interactive      Displays can be invoked and hid by manipulating physical objects. On the other hand these objects indicate the systems status.
Table            The system is integrated in a table, so everybody, who sits around it can use it.

The internal functionality is sketched below

• The tracker gathers information about the positions of the tangible objects .
• The GUI shows the graphical dialogs on the screen, depending on the positions of the objects. It also controls the media playback (the VLC mediaplayer) and accesses the required filesystem.
• The calibration is needed to adjust the camera image and the screen.
• The planner controls the movement of the TAOs.

Results

• visual and acoustic data can be played properly
• simple usablility of the TUM²IT-system
• marked prototypes can be used as symbolic storage devices, which are linked to user-specific data

Interaction video showing the usage of the TUM²IT-system, including choosing volume, data and playing it:

Discussion and Conclusion

In a modern living room the interactive table is a must-have for technology enthusiasts and evereyone, who likes to spend time with people watching movies, or listening to music.
Favorite playlists can be brought by friends and played instantly using this single device.
As many people as fit on the table can use the new technology simultanously.

Several problems still occur:

• multitouch is not implemented yet, so controlling the device by multiple users simultaneously is difficult.
• the use of both, XCF and RSB (see figure above) is unnecessary, because of the identic functionality, but makes the structure of the system more complex, so that future developers will have difficulties to understand the workflow.
• the pid-controller for the tangible active object is not working yet. Because of that the progressbar moves under the TAO, not the other way round. This makes it more unintuitive to recognize the progress of the currently played media.

Outlook

The development of TUM²IT is still in progress. The new definied desired goals are now:

• Simplify the internal structure of the system to save storage and processing capacities.
• Get rid of visual tracking to improve reliability in different enviroments and to avoid concealment by objects.
• Get rid of storage-prototypes, so that individual objects can be used.
• Add a possibility to create new playlists and link them to objekts.