Electronically enhanced board games by integrating physical and virtual spaces

Abstract

This paper describes an electronically enhanced board called E 2board. The motivation of our work comes from a traditional board game, which groups of players enjoy in a face-to-face situation by manipulating pieces on a physical board. In order to enhance users' excitement and immersiveness, a physical board and a virtual world created by a computer are linked together with E 2board. An important function of E 2board is the rapid recognition of massive numbers of different objects. The authors have developed several applications using E 2board: not only games, but also systems for supporting group activities. Some of these applications are shown. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.