Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

Visual markers are graphic symbols designed to be easily recognised by machines. They are traditionally used to track goods, but there is increasing interest in their application to mobile HCI. By scanning a visual marker through a camera phone users can retrieve localised information and access mobile services.

One missed opportunity in current visual marker systems is that the markers themselves cannot be visually designed, they are not expressive to humans, and thus fail to convey information before being scanned. This paper provides an overview of d-touch, an open source system that allows users to create their own markers, controlling their aesthetic qualities. The system runs in real-time on mobile phones and desktop computers. To increase computational efficiency d-touch imposes constraints on the design of the markers in terms of the relationship of dark and light regions in the symbols. We report a user study in which pairs of novice users generated between 3 and 27 valid and expressive markers within one hour of being introduced to the system, demonstrating its flexibility and ease of use.

REFERENCES

• 1: d-touch source code. http://sourceforge.net/projects/libdtouch.
• 2: Mobile codes consortium. http://www.mobilecodes.org/, February 2007.
• 3: Ross Bencina , Martin Kaltenbrunner , Sergi Jorda, Improved Topological Fiducial Tracking in the reacTIVision System, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Workshops, p.99, June 20-26, 2005 [doi>10.1109/CVPR.2005.475]
• 4: Enrico Costanza and Leinss Mirja. Telling a story on a tag: The importance of markers' visual design for real world applications (paper presentation). In Proceedings of the Mobile Interaction with the Real World Workshop at Mobile HCI2006, Espoo, Finland, sep 2006.
• 5: Enrico Costanza and John Robinson. A region adjacency tree approach to the detection and design of fiducials. In VVG, pages 63--69, 2003.
• 6: Enrico Costanza, Simon B Shelley, and John Robinson. D-touch: A consumer-grade tangible interface module and musical applications. In Proceedings of Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI03), 2003.
• 7: Enrico Costanza, Simon B Shelley, and John Robinson. Introducing audio d-touch: A tangible user interface for music composition and performance. In Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Digital Audio EffectsDAFx03, 2003.
• 8: Diego López de Ipiña , Paulo R. S. Mendonça , Andy Hopper, TRIP: A Low-Cost Vision-Based Location System for Ubiquitous Computing, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.6 n.3, p.206-219, May 2002 [doi>10.1007/s007790200020]
• 9: Mark Fiala, ARTag, a Fiducial Marker System Using Digital Techniques, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Volume 2, p.590-596, June 20-26, 2005 [doi>10.1109/CVPR.2005.74]
• 10: ISO. International standard, iso/iec18004. ISO International Standard, Jun 2000.
• 11: ISO. International standard, iso/iec16022â"international symbology specification, data matrix. ISO standard, 2006.
• 12: Woodland Norman J. and Bernard Silver. Classifying apparatus and method, October 1952.
• 13: David J. Johnston and Adrian F. Clark. A vision-based location system using fiducials. In VVG, pages 159--166, 2003.
• 14: Hirokazu Kato , Mark Billinghurst, Marker Tracking and HMD Calibration for a Video-Based Augmented Reality Conferencing System, Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE and ACM International Workshop on Augmented Reality, p.85, October 20-21, 1999
• 15: Kaj Mäkelä , Sara Belt , Dan Greenblatt , Jonna Häkkilä, Mobile interaction with visual and RFID tags: a field study on user perceptions, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240774]
• 16: Mathias Mohring , Christian Lessig , Oliver Bimber, Video See-Through AR on Consumer Cell-Phones, Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, p.252-253, November 02-05, 2004 [doi>10.1109/ISMAR.2004.63]
• 17: Takao Nakamura, Atsushi Katayama, Masashi Yamamuro, and Noboru Sonehara. Fast watermark detection scheme from camera-captured images on mobile phones. IJPRAI, 20(4):543--564, 2006.
• 18: Eamonn O'Neill, Peter Thompson, Stavros Garzonis, and Andrew Warr. Reach out and touch: Using nfc and 2d barcodes for service discovery and interaction with mobile devices. In Anthony LaMarca, Marc Langheinrich, and Khai N. Truong, editors, Pervasive, volume 4480 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 19--36. Springer, 2007.
• 19: Jun Rekimoto. Navicam: A magnifying glass approach to augmented reality systems. Teleoperators and Virtual Environ., 6(4):399--412, 1997.
• 20: Jun Rekimoto , Yuji Ayatsuka, CyberCode: designing augmented reality environments with visual tags, Proceedings of DARE 2000 on Designing augmented reality environments, p.1-10, April 2000, Elsinore, Denmark [doi>10.1145/354666.354667]
• 21: Michael Rohs and Philipp Zweifel. A conceptual framework for camera phone-based interaction techniques. In Pervasive Computing: Third International Conference, PERVASIVE 2005, number 3468 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Munich, Germany, May 2005. Springer-Verlag.
• 22: Azriel Rosenfeld. Adjacency in digital pictures. Information and Control, 26(1):24--33, September 1974.
• 23: Ron Shamir , Dekel Tsur, Faster Subtree Isomorphism, Journal of Algorithms, v.33 n.2, p.267-280, Nov. 1999 [doi>10.1006/jagm.1999.1044]
• 24: G. Thomas, J. Jin, T. Niblett, and C. Urquhart. A versatile camera position measurement system for virtual reality tv production. In Proc. Internat. Broadcasting Convention (IBC'97), pages 284--289, 1997.
• 25: Tikiwiki. http://tikiwiki.org/.
• 26: Eleanor Toye , Richard Sharp , Anil Madhavapeddy , David Scott , Eben Upton , Alan Blackwell, Interacting with mobile services: an evaluation of camera-phones and visual tags, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.11 n.2, p.97-106, January 2007 [doi>10.1007/s00779-006-0064-9]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
UI toolkits, fiducial recognition, mobile HCI, mobile devices, user studies, visual marker design, visual marker recognition