Augmenting Interactive Tables with Mice & Keyboards

Summary:

The research presented in this paper is very interesting. It brings forth an idea that I have not seen seen associated with touchscreen technology. The idea is to combine physical input devices with an interactive tabletop. They hypothesize that this will "provide spatial sensing, augment devices with co-located visual content, and support connections among a plurality of devices."


The group implemented several different ways to interact with the tabletop via mice and keyboards:

• Drag a document to your keyboard to dock
• Place your keyboard on a document to dock
• Type commands through your keyboard
• Place devices close to each other to link them
• Link mouse and keyboard by clicking on the keyboard
  
• Remote 'touch' via mouse
• "Leader Line" which locates the mouse pointer

The group suggested a scenario in which their research would be valuable: three college students are working on a class presentation. The students can independently collect research by conducting search queries through the tabletop - these queries can be applied to the web or personal documents. At this point, each student can create new documents to record their research findings. As the students finish their independent research, they can begin to collaborate together to combine their findings by linking their devices.

Comments:

I thought that the idea presented was extremely innovative. They mentioned that some previous work had been done in the area, but that their research would look farther into the topic. Since touchscreen technology has become a front runner as of late, this research could definitely come in handy. I think it is great that they are adding accuracy to the input methods of tabletop. Because tabletops are starting to mature application-wise, this research is very relevant.