TouchBridge: augmenting active tangibles for camera-based multi-touch surfaces

The augmentation of tabletop multi-touch surfaces with physical objects is a well visited approach for the realisation of tangible user interfaces. Interaction with objects on a multi-touch surface is often limited to spatial manipulation and common marker-based techniques for object tracking typically provide little more than position and orientation information for the objects. We present a novel, low-cost, approach for tracking objects on a camera-based multi-touch surface. Our approach utilises modulated Infrared light to provide a bi-directional communication channel between objects and the surface and thereby presents the opportunity for much richer forms of interaction with physical objects.