SideBySide Project.

SideBySide is a novel interactive system that allows multiple people to play and work together using handheld projectors at anytime and anyplace. SideBySide continues our  investigation of  mobile projectors as a new interactive medium that we started with MotionBeam project.

The use of SideBySide  is immediate and simple: users project onto a surface and their projection becomes aware and responsive to other projections nearby. Interaction can range from projector-based games, such as boxing with projected characters, to everyday tasks such as exchanging contact information by “dragging and dropping” onto another user’s projection.

Importantly, SideBySide does not require any fixed sensing in the environment and can be used anywhere: at home, at the office, or even inside the car during long road trips. The system consists of a hybrid mobile projector that outputs both visible and invisible projections at the same time. The invisible projection contains tracking data that can be recognized by the device camera, allowing accurate location tracking of multiple projections and lightweight communication between devices.

SideBySide was developed by Karl Willis, myself, Scott Hudson and Mo Mahler ad Disney Research, Pittsburgh. See Disney Research and my personal web sites for more information.