Bonfire: Hybrid Laptop-Tabletop Interaction

Shaun K. Kane, et. al., University of Washington & Intel Research

Summary

Describe a nomadic hybrid laptop-tabletop (NHLT) system which provides a horizontal surface in tandem to a vertical display.

Details

Recent advances in projector, laptop and camera technology have allowed integration of all these devices into a NHLT system that allows a portable and inexpensive laptop to provide tabletop interactions by using computer vision and tiny projection and imaging devices. On either side of laptop, a tiny projector and camera are mounted on the monitor. An adaptive Gaussian technique is used to distinguish background from foreground while skin detection is used to track user hands. A combination of laptop based accelerometer and camera view is used to identify user gestures. Object recognition is also built in to support some special interactions.

Some of the augmented interaction provided using Bonfire are:

• Tracking use of everyday objects for ex. coffee when coffee cup is placed.
• Infers state of user to modify its ambient response for ex. pauses music when headphones are placed down.
• Physical contextual bookmarks for applications so that certain apps reappear when associated physical item is present.
• Cross-device interaction with a mobile phone or newspaper to capture images or perform data transfer.
• Providing richer computer interaction using contextual displays such as application toolbars or extended field of views.

Authors plan on leveraging existing cameras to implement gaze tracking, depth sensing for 3D interactions and explore ‘co-located collaboration’ between multiple NHLT systems.

Review

While the work by authors is formidable, it is not clear to me what extra advantages such a scheme offers from having a portable tabletop or a touch based sensing device. The applications suggested by authors have the ‘coolness’ quotient (flicking images between mobile and Bonfire) but do not seem to be driven by any real world scenarios.

Disclaimer

The work discussed above is an original work presented at UIST 2009 by the authors/affiliations indicated at the starting of this post. This post in itself was created as part of course requirement of CPSC 436.