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The electronics-centered approach to physical computing presents challenges when designers build tangible interactive systems due to its inherent emphasis on circuitry and electronic components. To explore an alternative physical computing approach we have developed a computer vision (CV) based system that uses a webcam, computer, and printed fiducial markers to create functional tangible interfaces. Through a series of design studios, we probed how designers build tangible interfaces with this CV-driven approach. In this paper, we apply the annotated portfolio method to reflect on the fifteen outcomes from these studios. We observed that CV markers offer versatile materiality for tangible interactions, afford the use of democratic materials for interface construction, and engage designers in embodied debugging with their own vision as a proxy for CV. By sharing our insights, we inform other designers and educators who seek alternative ways to facilitate physical computing and tangible interaction design.
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Directing Tangible Controllers with Computer Vision and Beholder
We present Beholder, a computer vision (CV) toolkit for building tangible controllers for interactive computer systems. Beholder facilitates designers to build physical inputs that are instrumented with CV markers. By observing the properties of these markers, a CV system can detect physical interactions that occur. Beholder provides a software editor that enables designers to map CV marker behavior to keyboard events; thus connecting the CV-driven tangible controllers to any software that responds to keyboard input. We propose three design scenarios for Beholder—controllers to support everyday work, alternative controllers for games, and transforming physical therapy equipment into controllers to monitor patient progress.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2040489
- PAR ID:
- 10484709
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9781450394727
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 2
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Daegu Republic of Korea
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3550471.3564764
