MultiTouch Wall installed in the DCU CLARITY space

DCU recently installed the MultiTouch Wall – a large public display platform with interactive multi-user touch capability, funded by HEA Research Facilities Enhancement Scheme.

The device, currently operational in room N206, uses state-of-the-art modular LCD cells each containing near-infrared camera inside to detect the finger touch and movement on their LCD surfaces. Each cell is a 46 inch full HD LCD display and our configuration is five of them put next to each other, effectively becoming a large (3m x 1m) interactive multi-touch wall with the total resolution of 5,400 x 1,920 pixel. Its multi-touch capability means the system can recognise each of the finger touches separately and can process and react in parallel, allowing many users to approach and interact with the wall simultaneously. The large display size makes it suitable for visualising large amount of data with complex properties to be effectively presented and interacted with. Many interesting research questions arise due to these special characteristics of the device.

CLARITY researchers are working on a number of research projects started and/or lined up that will use the MultiTouch Wall as its central role. These include:

• Visualising Environmental Sensor Data on the Interactive Wall (Hyowon Lee, Edel O’Connor and Thibaud Rohmer; June – September 2009)
• Visualisation of Blog Sentiment Information (Neil O’Hare, Alan F. Smeaton and Tony Ward; June  - September 2009)
• Interaction Characterisation for Large Public MultiTouch Display (Hyowon Lee and Peng Wang; 2009 - 2010)
• Visualising LifeLog Data on the Large MultiTouch Wall (Cathal Gurrin and Zhengwei Qiu; 2009 - 2011)
• Use of Large MultiTouch Wall as Geographic Information System (Cathal Gurrin and Zhengwei Qiu; 2009 - 2011)
• Interaction Strategies for Information Exchange among Heterogeneous Interaction Platforms (Hyowon Lee; 2010)
• Natural Mapping between Available Gestures and Application Functionality on the Interactive Wall (Peng Wang and Hyowon Lee; 2009 - 2011)
• Investigation of Interaction Mechanisms to Maximise Collaboration among Multi-Touch Wall Users (Peng Wang and Hyowon Lee; 2009 - 2011)
• Investigation of Focal/Peripheral Vision Interplay for Large Multi-Touch Wall Interaction (Peng Wang and Hyowon Lee; 2009 - 2011)
• Leveraging the User’s Distance from the Wall in Optimising the Presentation and Interaction (Peng Wang and Hyowon Lee; 2009 - 2011)
• Collaborative Search for Multimedia Information on the Interactive Wall (Colum Foley; 2009 - 2010)
• Co-located Multi-user Gaming Environment on the Interactive Wall (Nelson Wang and Hyowon Lee; 2009 - 2010)

The above list is the current set of started and/or planned projects more interaction with CLARITY researchers will occur once availability and more familiarity with the Wall is established.