Work in Progress, Preliminary Results, and Ideas

Particles	Particles are developed at the Teco, University of Karlsruhe and are very much like Smart-Its with a different emphasize. Have a look at the Particles site.

UbiFitness	Creating ubiquitous computing systems that are usable outside the lab is a hard challenge. We report on ongoing work where sensor technology and wireless networks are integrated with sports equipment to improve the utility and usability of such equipment. Our focus is on the iterative design process for a multi-disciplinary team. We show how mutual learning became a central issue for the success of the design and development.

Nokia 770	The Nokia 770 is a small-scale Tablet PC running Maemo Linux. The project page describes issues related to the development of software and hardware for this device. The Nokia 770 development page provides a comprehensive overview with the goal to enable developers the usage of this device in all their projects with our focus on ubiquitous computing.

Display Server	The Display Server is a web server that can be used to communicate data to specific (LCD) displays. The current version supports a Barton I²C display attached to a Particle.

Displayed Connectivity	The Displayed Connectivity project combines the Display Server and the Display Addon for the Particle Microcontrollers to form a set of small displays connected directly or via the internet. These can then display states and information of each other.

Particle Ambient Orb	The ambient orb is a device for ambient information mediation. The Particle Ambient Orb uses the Particle platform and a 4 EUR led ball cheaply bought in a store.

Virrig Cursor	The Virrig Cursor (or Sensor-Virrig) is a large balance cushion from IKEA. Since it is uneven on the underside, it can be tilted in any direction. Measuring slope, rotation and pressure, it can be used as a cursor or joystick, steered with the whole body. It is a playful tangible user interface. Have a look at the paper "Playing with the real World" at PerGames 2005

Gesture Cube	Gesture Cube is a three-dimensional physical cube that is used as tangible user interface for inputting gestures. The project explores gestures that can be made with a cube. A machine learning approach is used to classify gestures in near-real time on Particle hardware.

Gesture UI	Thracker is a 2-dimensional (eventually 3-dimensional) USB input device for personal computers. The mouse cursor follows the user's hand movements in front of the screen. Thracker uses electrical field sensing utilizing four "antenna" plates positioned around the screen. It is not required to wear any kind of transmitter/tracking point.

Context-Aware Photography	Context-Aware Photography is a project to augment a standard digital camera with additional sensors so that the context in which the images are taken can be captured. Have a look at the paper at IWSAWC 2005.

Room Occupancy System	The Room Occupancy System enhances the familiar boards attached to offices showing the state of the room or occupant (e.g. present / at lunch / in a meeting / etc.). Using magnetic switches, this state can for example be transferred to a web server and shown on the personal webpage of the occupants.

DistScroll	The DistScroll is a new one-handed interaction device for navigating data structures or browsing menus using only one hand. It is especially designed for situations in which the user wears gloves that renders direct input too difficult or applications in which it is impossible or impractical to use both hands. Have a look at the paper at IWSAWC 2005.

Smart-Its	Smart-Its are small-scale embedded devices that can be attached to everyday objects to augment them with sensing, perception, computation and communication. They constitute the basis on which most of our projects are built upon. Here is the Smart-Its page..

WYSIWYG Tool Tips	The translucent WYSIWYG tool tips are an idea to enhance the functionality of tool tips.