CRISTAL: One Giant Remote Control Multi-Touch Coffee Table; ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 in Banff, Canada

Via Wired Gadget Lab Priya Ganapati 8/14/09

What is CRISTAL ? Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living Spaces and acronym for a project at the Media Interaction Lab at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, Digital Media.

Watch the videos:




"CRISTAL simplifies the control of our digital devices in and around the living room. The system provides a novel experience for controlling devices in a home environment by enabling users to directly interact with those devices on a live video image of their living room using multi-touch gestures on a digital tabletop." -mediainteractionlab, YouTube

The CRISTAL project is a collaboration between several people, spanning across a few universities, according to the Media Interaction Lab website:

Christian Rendl
Media Interaction Lab
Florian Perteneder
Media Interaction Lab
Thomas Seifried
Media Interaction Lab
Michael Haller
Media Interaction Lab
Daisuke Sakamoto
University of Tokyo
Jun Kato
University of Tokyo
Masahiko Inami
Keio University
Stacey D. Scott
University of Waterloo

CRISTAL received the Best Emerging Technology Award at the 36th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2009)

Below is a sample of the Interactive Media Lab's publications:

M. Haller, P. Brandl, C. Richter, T. Seifried, J. Leitner, and A. Gokcezade, 2009.
"Interactive Displays and Next-Generation Interfaces." Springer, 2009. [bibtex]




C. Köffel, W. Hochleitner, J. Leitner, M. Haller, A. Geven, and M. Tscheligi, 2009.
"Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Overall User Experience of Video Games and Advanced Interaction Games." Springer, 2009. [in press] [bibtex]


M. Haller, C. Forlines, C. Koeffel, J. Leitner, and C. Shen, 2009.

"Tabletop Games: Platforms, Experimental Games and Design Recommendations." Springer, 2009. in press [bibtex]

J. Leitner, C. Köffel, and M. Haller, 2009.

"Bridging the gap between real and virtual objects for tabletop games," International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. 7, pp. 33-40, 2009. in press [bibtex]




J. Leitner, M. Haller, K. Yun, W. Woo, M. Sugimoto, M. Inami, A. D. Cheok, and H. D. Been-Lirn, 2009.
"Physical Interfaces For Tabletop Games," Computer Entertainment, vol. XX, p. XX, 2009. [bibtex]

M. Haller and M. Billinghurst, 2008.
"Interactive Tables: Requirements, Design Recommendations, and Implementation."

D. Leithinger and M. Haller, 2007.
"Improving Menu Interaction for Cluttered Tabletop Setups with User-Drawn Path Menus," Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, 2007. TABLETOP 07. Second Annual IEEE International Workshop on, pp. 121-128, 2007. [bibtex]




D. Regenbrecht, M. Haller, J. Hauber, and M. Billinghurst, 2006.
"Carpeno: interfacing remote collaborative virtual environments with table-top interaction," Virtual Reality, vol. 10, iss. 2, pp. 95-107, 2006. [bibtex]

One of the people involved in the CRISTAL project is Stacey D. Scott, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is also the director of the Collaborative Systems Laboratory. The Collaborative Systems Laboratory focuses on fundamental interfaces and interaction techniques for shared large-screen displays, such as multi-display environments and social-supporting digital tabletop interfaces, and also collaborative and decision support interfaces for complex, time-critical team environments.

Dr. Scott is also one of the program co-chairs of the upcoming ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 Conference will be held November 23-25 in Banff, Canada.

Mark your calendars!

The following topics, as they relate to interactive tabletops and surfaces, will be presented:

• Applications
• Gesture-based interfaces
• Multi-modal interfaces
• Tangible interfaces
• Novel interaction techniques
• Data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces
• Data presentation on large interactive surfaces
• User-interface technology
• Computer supported collaborative systems
• Middleware and network support
• Augmented reality
• Social protocols
• Information visualizations
• Sensing and input technologies
• Human-centered design & methodologies

Here is the "who's who" of interactive tabletops and surfaces- the Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces program committee:

Patrick Baudisch	Hasso Plattner Institute Potsdam, Germany
Francois Berard	University of Grenoble, France
Peter Brandl	Media Interaction Lab, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Andreas Butz	University of Munich, Germany
Francois Coldefy	Orange Labs, France
Morten Fjeld Chalmers	University of Technology, Sweden
Kentaro Fukuchi	University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Tovi Grossman	Autodesk Research, Canada
Mark Hancock	University of Calgary, Canada
Petra Isenberg	University of Calgary, Canada
Yuichi Itoh	Osaka University, Japan
Karrie Karahalios	University of Illinois, USA
Hiro Kato	Osaka University, Japan
Hideki Koike	University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Frank Maurer	University of Calgary, Canada
Max Mühlhäuser	TU Darmstadt, Germany
Christian Muller-Tomfelde	CSIRO-ICT Centre, Australia
Miguel Nacenta	University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Patrick Olivier	Newcastle University, UK
Jun Rekimoto	Sony / University of Tokyo, Japan
Meredith Ringel Morris	Microsoft Research, USA
Daisuke Sakamoto	Tokyo University, Japan
Yoichi Sato	University of Tokyo, Japan
Chia Shen	Harvard University, USA
Masahiro Takatsuka	University of Sydney, Australia
Lucia Terrenghi	Vodafone Group R&D, Germany
Bruce Thomas	University of Southern Australia, Australia
Melanie Tory	University of Victoria, Canada
Edward Tse	SMART Technologies, Canada
Fred Vernier	South-Paris University, France
Andy Wilson	Microsoft Research, USA
Massimo Zancanaro	Bruno Kessler Foundation (formerly ITC), Italy

If you are a university student researching interactive tabletops, multi-touch surfaces, and/or gesture interaction, I hope this post helps!