SideBySide has also been covered widely in the press, including articles by Wired, New Scientist, Engadget, Gizmodo, Creative Applications, CNET, and Discovery.

SideBySide is a prototype system developed at Disney Research for ad-hoc multi-user interaction using a mobile camera and a hybrid visible/infrared light mobile projector. From completely separate devices, projected imagery can interact and respond to other imagery as if they share the same screen. The system tracks multiple projected images in relation to one another using invisible fiducial markers projected in infrared.

SideBySide allows new interaction scenarios where users are not tied to a fixed location. For example, exchanging digital content, such as personal contact information or media files, can be initiated using lightweight optical communication. Projector games can be played by multiple users with characters that interact together from separate devices. As the system does not require sensing hardware installed in the environment, interaction can take place almost anywhere.

Created by: Karl D.D. Willis, Ivan Poupyrev, Scott E. Hudson, & Moshe Mahler.

Official Site: Disney Research

Research Paper: SideBySide: Ad-hoc Multi-user Interaction with Handheld Projectors

Awards: UIST 2011 “Best Paper”, UIST 2011 “Best Demo”

Special Thanks: Christopher Ioffreda, Yu Willis, Cheng Xu, Jo Ana Parker, Sharon Hoosein, and Mark D Gross

Selected Press: Wired, New Scientist, Engadget, Gizmodo, Creative Applications, CNET, Discovery, PC World, Page Magazine, BBC Click

The article focuses on the ‘second life’, or renaissance, of Pittsburgh. It shows a sneak-peek at the upcoming SideBySide handheld projector prototype we will present at the UIST ’11 conference.

“…the most unique gaming system we’ve ever seen” – PC World

“No, they’re not kidding” – Bruce Sterling, Wired

“Disney appears to be thinking ahead for western smartphones and is already developing game applications for [projector] phone[s]” – New Scientist

MotionBeam is a project from Disney Research that explores new forms of character interaction using handheld projectors. With our prototype system, users interact and control projected characters by moving and gesturing with the projection device. This creates a unified interaction style where sensor input and projector output are tied together within a single device.

Our character and racing game applications show how MotionBeam can be applied and used with mobile games. It can also be utilized for augmented reality interaction, by linking projected content to physical objects in the environment. We envision MotionBeam as a key component in a new ‘game projector’ platform where the real world becomes a playground and users interact directly with each other and the environment.

Created by: Karl D.D. Willis, Ivan Poupyrev & Takaaki Shiratori

Official Site: Disney Research

Research Paper: MotionBeam: A Metaphor for Character Interaction with Handheld Projectors

Special Thanks: Keiko Nakao and Cheng Xu

Selected Press: New Scientist, PC World, Creative Applications, Crunch Gear

Handheld projectors are small projection devices that have recently come to market and are currently being embedded into a range of electronic devices such as mobile phones and digital cameras. Despite the growing adoption of this new technology, contemporary research has largely ignored historical usage of handheld projectors.

Pre-cinema handheld projectors such as the Magic Lantern and the Japanese Utsushi-e performance offer important historical precedents for contemporary handheld projector-based interaction. This research paper outlines an initial ‘pre-history’ of handheld projector-based interaction by documenting historic projection techniques and outlining their relevance to contemporary research.

Research Paper: A Pre-history of Handheld Projector-based Interaction

Funded by: Carnegie Mellon University GuSH grant

Fabricate Yourself is a project that documented the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference. Usually we think of documentation in terms of text, photography and video, but given the tangible theme of the conference we decided to engage the community by capturing and fabricating small 3D models of attendees. This enabled us to build a tangible model of the event and fabricate it piece by piece during the conference.

Attendees firstly capture their favorite pose using a Microsoft Kinect. The depth image from the Kinect is processed into a mesh and displayed onscreen in real-time. At any time they can capture the mesh and save it as an STL file.

Dovetail joints are automatically added to the side of the models so they can be snapped together. This allows multiple models to be connected to form a larger overall model.

The STL files were printed using a Dimension uPrint 3D printer kindly provided by Stratasys. The printer was working night and day during the conference as we kept it fed with numerous models created by attendees.

As we wanted to be able to fabricate a large number of models, we kept the size of the pieces down to approximately 3x3cm. To print at the 3x3cm size we only needed to use one quarter of the full Kinect resolution. Below are renderings of the models created by attendees, as you can see they are quite low resolution due to the print size.

Ideally we would like to be able to produce these much much faster. Despite the long print times, people would return frequently to check if their model was finished. The excitement of creating something and instantly seeing the results is something we are all familiar with; be it with Polaroid cameras or Purikura stickers. Unfortunately for 3D printing it seems we are still some way off this reality.

Special Thanks: Ian Oakley, Nicolas Villar, James Scott, Mark Gross and Cheng Xu

Selected Press: Wired, Joystiq, PC World, Engadget, New Scientist, Creative Applications

Beautiful Modeler is a software tool for gestural sculpting using a multi-touch controller such as an iPad. Each finger is used to control a single touch point in the model, with multiple layers working to build up 3D volume. As the controller is connected over the wireless network, it can be moved freely to change the viewing angle of the model.

The model itself is presented on the main display rather than on the controller itself; this prevents occlusion of the model when sculpting with the whole hand. The controller screen does not need to be viewed while sculpting, meaning the controller can be rotated or flipped to sculpt from a range of angles. Currently the model is constructed using metaballs, but this is just one approach for gestural input to be transformed into geometry.

Beautiful Modeler and the Beautiful Controller were created using openFrameworks. The finished mesh can be exported as an STL file, meaning the sculpted form can be fabricated immediately. In the video above, the positive mesh has been post-processed to create a negative form for fabrication with a plaster-based 3D printer. A simple circuit is then affixed inside the form to create a lamp. The shadows cast by the negative lamp shape reflect the original positive form.

Special Thanks: Golan Levin, Wayne Chung, and P. Zach Ali

Selected Press: Wired, Fast Company, Creative Applications, Gizmodo, Engadget

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=REI4rJVXQJg

Sony Ericsson has just released a new phone called the Cedar™. Aside from being environmentally friendly using recycled plastics, waterborne paint, and reduced packaging – the one and only 12Pixels comes pre-installed on the phone!

A big thank you to Testu Natsume for following through on this and to the people at Sony Ericsson in Sweden.