In this project we present the NiCE Formula Editor, which recognizes handwritten formulas to provide in situ computation and visualization. Our editor uses a novel hardware setup, suitable for use as a desktop or whiteboard that disambiguates pen and multi-touch input. In our interface, the pen writes and performs gestures, while touch manipulates. Multiple users can sketch mathematical expressions (e.g. formulas, vectors, matrices, etc.) with digital pens on the interactive surface. These expressions are analyzed and interpreted using the StarPad SDK’s support for mathematics recognition.
Daniel just finished his Master at the MIT Media Lab and moved to Pittsburgh. He is now working for Mickey Mouse =). Actually, he is working together with Ivan Poupyrev at Disney Research. Â Before moving to Disney, Ivan was working for Sony CSL in Tokyo - together with Jun Rekimoto. In fall, Daniel will go back to continue his PhD. WOW!
We are really proud to make a really big announcement: Dr. Peter Brandl has successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled “The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Interactive Meeting Room” and has received the Dr. from the Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria. The whole Media Interaction Lab congratulates to this success.
We will present the “NiCE Formula Editor” at SIGGRAPH 2010. In this talk, we present a system, which recognizes handwritten formulas to provide in situ computation and visualization. Our editor uses a novel hardware setup, suitable for use as a desktop or whiteboard that disambiguates pen and multi-touch input. In our interface, the pen writes and performs gestures, while touch manipulates. Multiple users can sketch mathematical expressions (e.g. formulas, vectors, matrices, etc.) with digital pens on the interactive surface. These expressions are analyzed and interpreted using the StarPad SDK’s (from our friends at the Brown University) support for mathematics recognition. Pen and touch gestures can be used to manipulate the written expressions. In addition, expressions can be selected and moved by touch or pen input.
We are happy to announce that CRISTAL won the Grand Prix du Jury at the Laval Virtual 2010. Laval Virtual is one of the largest Virtual Reality exhibitions worldwide and is hosted in Laval, France. Our team exhibited the CRISTAL installation for five days, not only to professionals but also for the first time to a public audience. In the attached video you can see some nice impressions from the Laval Virtual 2010.
(c) Photo by Jean-Charles Druais
Continue reading ‘CRISTAL won Grand Prix at Laval Virtual 2010′
The Media Interaction Lab is now working together with the Keio-NUS CUTE Center. For the next three years (starting in February, 2010) the lab will send students to Singapore for working on next generation ambient displays. We will mainly focus on flexible displays using shape memory alloy material. Together with the team in Singapore (which focuses on the hardware), the Austrian team will develop the applications and design the user studies. It is great that the lab will also get support from Inami, Nii, and Maki from the Keio University.
The Media Interaction Lab will present two full papers at CHI 2010. In the first paper “The NiCE Discussion Room: Integrating Paper and Digital Media to Support Co-Located Group Meetings” we introduce a novel digital meeting room design, the NiCE Discussion Room, which integrates digital and paper tools into a cohesive system with an intuitive pen-based interface. This design solution provides groups with a flexible design solution that enables them to create, access, and share information and media from a variety of sources to facilitate group discussions. The paper describes the design solution, along with results from a user study conducted to evaluate the usability and utility of the system.
The second paper “NiCEBook – Supporting Natural Note Taking” we present a digital paper notebook that supports taking, structuring and reusing notes. Through a study of note-taking habits, we observed that different strategies are used to organize and share notes. Based on these findings, we developed a design for a notebook that combines different approaches to better support these activities. The details of our design were informed by an additional online survey. With NiCEBook, we present a solution that combines the flexibility and simplicity of taking notes on paper with the benefits of a digital representation.
Last week we attended the International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Tabletops 2009 in Banff/Canada to have a look at the latest developments in Surface and Tabletop Research. We also presented a paper about our tabletop remote control CRISTAL and gave a tutorial about input technologies for large displays. The conference took place in the impressive Banff Springs Hotel which is placed in a quite nice landscape as you can see in the picture.
We are very happy to announce that the Media Interaction Lab got the Staatspreis Multimedia 2009 in the category Innovation for the project “CRISTAL”. Â CRISTAL is a multi-user tabletop experience which allows an easy interaction with multiple hardware devices.
Best Emerging Technology Award for the project CRISTAL at the 36th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2009). An interesting article has been published in WIRED, Engadget, and Engadget Japan. A nice Youtube video can be found here.
