Friday, March 6, 2009

The folks over at Trackmate have come up with a super clever device taking our usual interaction with computers...predominately by way of keyboard and mouse...to a much more interactive interface. With tangible objects coupled with digital information the possibilities abound. If the objects can be anything the user chooses, how much fun would it be to make characters out of the objects and perhaps the digital input could be a variety of words and phrases...perhaps used as a language tool, or a game for kids. Also the potential for math, word, or brain-teaser puzzles would be awesome. The music application is pretty incredible itself...

Trackmate LusidOSC Sequencer Application from Adam Kumpf on Vimeo.

From Trackmate
For over 20 years researchers have been looking at ways to go beyond the mouse and keyboard to interact with computers. One of the most promising areas has been tangible user interfaces; physical objects directly coupled with digital information. These new interfaces have typically required expensive technologies and complex installation procedures, limiting them to the context of specialized research labs and museums.

Trackmate is an open source initiative to create an inexpensive, do-it-yourself tangible tracking system. The Trackmate Tracker allows any computer to recognize tagged objects and their corresponding position, rotation, and color information when placed on a surface. Trackmate sends all object data via LusidOSC (a protocol layer for unique spatial input devices), allowing any LusidOSC-based application to work with the system.

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