An Installation of Interactive Furniture

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An Installation of Interactive Furniture

• O. Omojola, E. R. Post, M. D. Hancher, Y.
  Maguire, R. Pappu, B. Schoner, P. R. Russo, R.
  Fletcher, and N. Gershenfeld

20015856 ???
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Contents

• Introduction
• Overview of Installations
• Welcome Mat
• Dining Table
• Structure
• Physical Icons
• Gestural Interface
• Lazy Susan
• Network Infrastructure
• System Software
• Results and Conclusion

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Introduction

• Interface Technology
• Advances in computing technology
• Interface Technology did not change much with
  time
• Non-intuitive techniques like mouse, keyboard
• Computing technology cut users off from the rest
  of the world
• Previous Efforts
• Efforts to enable the vision of embedding
  computing power into everyday objects such as
  clothing and furniture in disparate pieces
• Few projects that interconnect these disparate
  pieces, such as Brain Opera

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Introduction

• Un-Private House
• Designed by MoMA and MIT Media Lab
• Goals
• Giving the visitors the information of exhibits
• Making the space react to the presence of the
  visitors
• To provide smart spaces in museum exhibits
• Using technology in ways that enhanced
  conventional functions within home
• Information format
• electric form
• texts, images, videos
• Providing display and browsing access to all of
  these

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Overview of Installations

• Gallery Arrangement
• Modeled after a house
• gallery and the associated furniture imitating
  the various rooms and functions
• 26 architectural projects on display
• Models and other display pieces distributed
  throughout the gallery on tables and other pieces
  of furniture

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Overview of Installations

• Interactive Welcome Mat
• Image of a welcome mat appears on the floor
• Image moves in response to the motion of the
  visitors

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Overview of Installations

• Interactive Table
• Structure
• 8 foot diameter, five-legged table
• 5-foot-diameter lazy Susan, with recessed holes
  in outer edge
• A set of 26 coasters
• Interface
• Blue circle in the upper right corner
• Picking a coaster and placing it on the active
  spot

Setting of Interactive Table
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Overview of Installations

• Interactive Table
• Allowing a user to send image to the center
• Another user interested in looking at the image
  could rotate the lazy Susan

• Result Information
• hot spots

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Overview of Installations

• Interactive Table
• Lazy Susan

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Welcome Mat

• Schematic Drawing
• A video camera and a projector arranged above the
  projected area
• Camera detects changes in the visual field
• Presents changes to a simple physical model

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Welcome Mat

• Functional Block Diagram
• Texture mapped onto the distorted lattice of unit
  masses and rendered using OpenGL

Camera
Physical Model
OpenGL Rendering
Projector
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Welcome Mat

• Representative Image
• The image activity causing the distortion is in
  the upper right corner
• The red dots are the individual masses

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Structure of Interactive Table
projector0
projector1
projector
display0
display1
display2
Lazy Susan
Table
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Structure of Interactive Table

• Functional Block Diagram

Computer
Network Hub
One place setting
Filament
Filament
Taufish Array
Tag Reader
Users hands
Coaster
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Physical Icons

• Coaster lcons
• Tags in Coasters
• Tag in coaster, tag reader in place setting

Coaster Icons
Tag Reader
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Physical Icons

• Tag Reader Interpreter

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Gestural Interface

• Electric-field Sensing
• Musical instrument known as Theremin
• Classic example of an EFS device
• Sensing small variations induced by body
• Converting these measurements to an audible form

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Gestural Interface

• Display of Image

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Lazy Susan

• Structure

Aperture Ring
Interface Board
Sensor Board
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Network Infrastructure

• Structure
• 17 sensors in the dining table were connected to
  each other and the controlling computer via
  Ethernet
• Filament
• Designed to address the needs for distributed
  processing
• Ethernet controller micro-controller

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System Software

• Major Constraint
• Time to completion was short
• Environment enabling the design company to focus
  on content creation
• Interaction with sensing devices
• Software Environment
• Micro-code on RISC
• Micro-controller that communicate over Ethernet
  to a Java applet
• JavaScript which controls the HTML and DHTML of a
  web page

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Results and Conclusions

• Development Cycle
• Spent a lot of time in debugging H/W
• Need for a system that allow arbitrary
  computation without full O/S
• Reactions
• Various reactions from the mildly amused to the
  completely visceral
• Novel enough to engage some of the younger users
  for some time

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Results and Conclusions

• Contribution
• Proposing a better way to get at information that
  a monitor and mouse
• Benefit to those who do not like computers but
  who want to get information