Interesting touch technology: PhotoelasticTouch

Hideki Koike talked at the Symposium on Interaction with Smart Artifacts in Tokyo. One of the examples he showed is the PhotoelasticTouch technology. The idea is to use a transparent gel and the effect of photoelasticity to detect interaction on a surface, see [1] for details. [2] give a brief overview (the picture below is taken from this publication).
There is a nice youtube videp the shows the concept very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJaEg0xB98E

[1] Toshiki Sato, Haruko Mamiya, Hideki Koike, and Kentaro Fukuchi. 2009. PhotoelasticTouch: transparent rubbery tangible interface using an LCD and photoelasticity. In Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 43-50. DOI=10.1145/1622176.1622185 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1622176.1622185

[2] One page abstract: http://www.vogue.is.uec.ac.jp/PET/photoelasticTouch1Page.pdf

Lab Tour on arrival in Tokyo

After a long day/night of travelling I arrived in Tokyo. Arriving at the hotel we were met by our Japanese Colleague Yoshito Tobe and guided us to a Lab tour in the afternoon. We went by train to the Morikawa Labs in the Komaba Research Campus at the University of Tokyo.

At the lab students from different group showed us their work and discussed their ideas with us. To mention only a few things I got to try out a tutoring system for Japanese calligraphy, we saw prototypes for phone based urban sensing, and saw an implementation of a system that communicates between two devices using accelerometers and vibration motors [1].

After the tour we went up a tower building to look at the sunset above Tokyo and we even had a view on Mount Fuji. And as the observation floor is a touristy place there are all sorts of interesting things - and I operated a nice machine to get a puri-CUBE.

Some more photos are available at: http://tinyurl.com/LabTok11 (facebook account required) or public on flickr.


[1] vib-connect: A Device Selecting Interface Using Vibration by Hiroshi Nakahara et al. Demo at IOT 2010.

SEGA World - relaxing after the conference :-)

On the way back from the PC-dinner we needed to get an update on another aspect of Japanese technologies and so we went into SEGA World in Nara.

Many of the games are very similar to other toys around the world - shooter, sports games and racing games. Each time you use games in such a setting one is reminded of the power a physical controls and the concept of tangible interaction...


The photo maker however was very different from what I have seen before. Technically it is interesting and well engineered: you make photos in a well lit area, it removes the background, and then you can choose background, borders, frames etc. Marc's Japanese helped us to get our pictures out of the machine - with more time an more Japanese reading skill we could have manipulated our pictures some more. It was interesting that the machine offered two options for output: paper and transfer to your mobile phone.

PS: remember not to play basketball against James and not to race against Antonio ;-)

Japan - sightseeing (an less phone usage than expected)

To get cheaper flights we took a flight on Thursday/Friday to fly from Europe to Japan (never really understood the pricing model of flights). So we had two days off before the actual conference and many colleagues (who also took cheap flights) were also there. We went to do some sightseeing in Nara and Kyoto - which was great.

In Kyoto we got personal guides - students from a University in Kyoto - who offered to show us run and use this to practice their English. It was great for us as we got many insights we would have missed by ourselves and it was great to talk to some locals. Hopefully they enjoyed their time with us, too. In the evening we learned once more that the Japanese people are very social; we met the Nara Air Rescue team in a restaurant - and this was proof :-).

One thing that surprised me greatly was that very few people in Nara and Kyoto used their phone in public. On the train nearly nobody spoke on the phone, watch mobile TV or browsed the web. This is obviously very different from Tokyo. Overall Nara and Kyoto are very enjoyable and calming places. I hope to have at some point the time to spend more time in Japan (… when is my next sabbatical? ;-)

For more photos see: http://foto.ubisys.org/pervasive2009/

PS: an some people find a disco in the street...