Inter-personal displays: Augmenting the physical world where people get together

Abstract

The aim of this project is to design and demonstrate the future of information environment where people get together. Personal computers and smart devices have succeeded in augmenting the ability of each person. At now, even when people meet at a place, they tend to gaze at their own displays. As a result, they cannot concentrate on face-to-face communication among them. This means that current information technology well designed for personal activities is insufficient for group ones. The authors believe that this problem is mainly caused by the limitation of current display technology. For exceeding this limitation, this article introduces three approaches: (1) privacy control of display content for promoting discussion in groups, (2) projection-based control of physical objects for suppressing the incompatibility between the physical and digitalworlds and (3) spatial imaging for augmented reality among people without wearable displays. These contributions can transform existing personal display technology to novel inter-personal one which is useful for people getting together.