Multi-touch Tables

1. Blue Multi-touch Table (November 2009 - December 2010)

1. MS Fluids, MT4J toolkit displayed at Te Papa Museum	2. Collaboratively sharing information with multi-touch table, iPad, and iPhone

Hardware

• Table: steel frame with hard wood sides and wheels, size 1100mm (width) x 930mm (height) x 750mm (depth).
• Touch Surface: 1077mm x 673mm approx 50 inches
• Surface Material: Plexiglas Rear Projection 7D006 (5mm below) and clear acrylic (3mm on top). We had to get a whole sheet and had to cut the 7D006 sheet
• Camera: one modified Sony Playstation 3 Camera from Peau Productions
• Camera Lens: 1.67mm 113 Degree FOV CS Lens (No Distortion)
• IR Lights: one 4 Bar Infrared LED Emitter Kit - 850nm and 25-Module LED Infrared Kit from Peau Productions. Also experimented with eight spotlights from Jaycar plugged into 240 volts. Some wiring and cable connection was also required. See, 18 LED IR Spotlight for Cameras, had to tape the daylight sensor.
• Projector: Sanyo PLC-WXL46 (short throw, 1280x800)
• Computer: Dell Optiplex 760 Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.0 GHz, 4GB Ram, ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series

Deal Extreme also offer parts:

• IR 48 LED InfraRed Illumination Light for Night Vision (DC 12V 500mA)
• 2.8mm~16mm Fixed IRIS Lens Set for Webcams and Security/CCTV Cameras (6-Lens Pack)
• 2.1mm 160-Degree Wide Angle Lens for Security Cameras and Webcams

Software

• Client Software: Multi-touch For Java (MT4j)
• Detection Software: Community Core Vision (CCV) 1.4
• Camera Driver Software: Code Laboratories CL Eye Driver
• Operating System: Windows 7

2. Black Multi-touch Table (July-October 2009)

The Black Multi-touch Table is a Diffused Illumination (DI) multi-touch table and used Community Core Vision. In summary the IR lights worked really well with the 99561 projection surface and clear acrylic on top, but the table is too small at 28 inches and 1024x768 resolution. The projected image is bounced off a mirror which causes some ghosting effects depending on the application. Also see MultiTouchTableSetup.

Yi-JingChung demonstrating at Careers Expo	MSA Fluids by Memo Akten

Example

Film Demo of multi-touch table March 2010

Hardware

• Table: old trolley table dimension of surface 620mm x 545mm, bonus comes with wheels
• Touch Surface: 570mm x 420mm, approx 28 inch
• Surface Material: Plexiglas Rear Projection 99561 Rear Projection (3mm) and then clear acrylic glass on top (5mm)
• Camera: one modified Sony Playstation 3 Camera from Peau Productions. Thanks to Jordan and Owen for lending me their camera to get my prototype up and running. We have since purchased three PS3 cameras.
• IR Lights: two spotlights from Jaycar plugged into 240 volts. Some wiring and cable connection was also required. See, 18 LED IR Spotlight for Cameras, had to tape the daylight sensor
• Projector: Sony XGA VPL PX3, also see Projection Calculator
• Mirror: basic mirror from a hardware store or department warehouse, see Robert Priewasser's Projector Image Calculator and the SimProj Project : A Multitouch setup simulator.
• Sides of table: first had plain cardboard that is white, can be picked up from most graphics shops, and then used a black cloth
• Sticky Material: plain old duct tape!

Software

• Client Software: Processing and TUIOZones
• Detection Software: Community Core Vision (CCV) 1.2
• Camera Driver Software: Code Laboratories CL Eye Driver
• Operating System: MacOSX 10.5.8

Configuration Setup

As of October 2011 a computer has been integrated into the table. The machine is running Windows 7 and has eclipse, SVN, CCV and the required drivers.

Login: Displaytable\admin

Password: Blacktab13

For more details about setting up the Black Multi-touch Table see MultiTouchTableSetup

3. Prototypes (May-July 2009)

Multi-touch Table Experiments

Our first prototype multi-touch table we built a Diffused Illumination (DI) multi-touch table. We used the Community Core Vision blob detection software. In summary the main issue is that the lights are either too bright or not bright enough, we need something in between. The table surface material (glass, safety glass, persplex, tracing and drafting paper) never worked to our satisfaction and did not allow CCV to detect blobs very well.

Community Core Vision	Trolley Multi-touch frame
Camera setup and IR Lights	Sony Projector
Computer Desk (1200mm x 800mm) frosting too strong for IR lights.	Safety glass with drafting film and tracing paper.
DSE camera (XH5223).	Band pass lens to detect only IR images.
8 IR LEDs mounted in a bread board, lights too directional.	Infra-red heat lamp, too bright.

Also see:

• MT Biggie - a larger table by Seth Sandler to introduce the concepts of multi-touch tables.

MT Mini

I followed the instructions on the NUI group web site to create a track pad by Seth Sandler, How to Make a Cheap Multitouch Pad - Hardware Thread. I had a box some clear acrylic, drafting paper, and a modified web cam from Dick Smith. I got given the acrylic plexiglas and borrowed the web cam. The box was just lying around the department. I used CCV though.

Also see:

• The 15 Eur Designer Multitouch Pad by Anne Roudaut.

4. Documentation

Contact

As part of CraigAnslow's PhD we have built two multi-touch tables to explore the possible techniques that could be used for software visualization and visual software analytics.

Our colleagues Dr. Ajay Kapur, and PhD students Jordan Hochenbaum, and Owen Vallis in the Sonic Arts program of the New Zealand School of Music also have multi-touch tables, see their FlipMu web site for more details.

Visit the NUI Group Community for more information

Publications

• Craig Anslow, Stuart Marshall, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Interactive Multi-touch Surfaces for Software Visualization. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Data Exploration for Interactive Surfaces (DEXIS) at the Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS), Kobe, Japan, 2011.
• Craig Anslow, Stuart Marshall, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. SourceVis: A Tool for Multi-touch Software Visualization. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS), Kobe, Japan, 2011.
• Hien Tran, Craig Anslow, Stuart Marshall, Alex Potanin, Mairead De Roise. Lessons Learnt from Collaboratively Creating Maps on a Touch Table. In Proceedings of the New Zealand Conference on Human Computer Interaction (CHINZ), Hamilton, New Zealand, 2011.
• Craig Anslow. Multi-touch Table User Interfaces for Co-located Collaborative Software Visualization. In Proceedings of the Doctoral Symposium at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS), Saarbrucken, Germany, 2010

Technical Guides

• For setting up our multi-touch tables see MultiTouchTableSetup.

• Natural User Interface (NUI) Group Forums
• Getting Started with CCV
• Multi-Touch Terminology

• Building Interactive Multi-touch Surfaces. Johannes Schoening, Jonathan Hook, Nima Motamedi, Patrick Olivier, Florian Echtler, Peter Brandl, Laurence Muller, Florain Daiber, Otmar Hilliges, Markus Lochtefeld, Tim Roth, Dominik Schmidt, Ulrich von Zadow. Chapter 2, Tabletops-Horizontal Interactive Displays, Christian Muller-Tomfelde (editor), Springer, 2010.
• Multi-touch Technologies NUI Group Community Book. Alex Teiche, Ashish Kumar Rai, Chris Yanc, Christian Moore, Donovan Solms, Gorkem Cetin, Justin Riggio, Nolan Ramseyer, Paul D'Intino, Laurence Muller, Ramsin Khoshabeh, Rishi Bedi, Mohammad Taha Bintahir, Thomas Hansen, Tim Roth, Seth Sandler. 2009.
• Multi-touch Surfaces: A Technical Guide TUM-I0833. Johannes Schoening, Peter Brandl, Florain Daiber, Florian Echtler, Otmar Hilliges, Jonathan Hook, Markus Lochtefeld, Nima Motamedi, Laurence Muller, Patrick Olivier, Tim Roth, Ulrich von Zadow. 2008.

Industry Collaboration

We have industry collaboration with the following New Zealand companies.

• NextWindow - Gordon MacDonald and John Newton
• Unlimited Realities - David Brebner and Ben Wilde
• IceAV - Kevin Andreassend

and international companies:

• Evoluce - Wolfgang Herfurtner

Acknowledgements

• Thank to Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis from FlipMu who provided lots of advice since they have done this a few times before, plus letting me borrow their PS3 camera.
• Thanks to Nick Grinter and Alan Rennie from SCPS for building the frame of the Blue Multi-touch Table
• Thanks to PippinBarr and RillaKhaled (Elvis Alumni) for spending time with the configuration and giving me lots of advice on what to do in terms of building this table and software requirements. While at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada they built a DI multi-touch table using a similar approach, see http://hotsoft.carleton.ca/hotsoft/pix/touch/
• Thanks to Roger Cliffe for technical assistance.
• Thanks to Jason Edwards and Tim Exley for technical assistance with the LED lights, camera, and filter lenses.
• Thanks to Mel and Aaron from PSP for providing some samples of acrylic glass.
• Thanks to Laureen and Sue from VUW ITS teaching services for providing an old used trolley that I could experiment with.
• Thanks to Ian from Anderson Design for providing some acrylic glass and the magical 99561 rear projection acrylic glass.
• Thanks to Philippe Kruchten for creating a film of some of my work.
• Thanks to the Faculty of Engineering, TelstraClear, and the Foundation of Research Science and Technology Software Process and Product Improvement project for providing financial assistance to build these tables.