This article introduces a method called SLAC (Simultaneous Localization And Capture) to track the spatial location of a human using wearable inertia sensors without additional external assistive global sensing device (e.g., camera, ultrasound, IR, etc.) The method uses multiple wearable inertia sensors to determine the orientation of the body segments and lower limb joint motions. At the same time, based on human kinematics and locomotion phase detection, the spatial position and trajectory of a reference point on the body can be determined. Preliminary experimental study has shown that the position error of SLAC can be controlled stairs within less than 2% error of the total distance travelled for a person to walk around a rectangle on the floor and climb up and down stairs. A benchmark study on the accuracy of SLAC was carried out using the camera-based Motion Analysis® system. The localization data obtained from SLAC tally well with that from the commercial system. The positioning accuracy obtained from SLAC is at least an order of magnitude better than that of GPS. Since the sensors can be worn on the human at any time and any place, this method has no restriction to indoor and outdoor applications and is complimentary to GPS applications.

In an interactive augmented reality (AR) system, people are, most of the time, immersed in an environment rich of visual and audio feedback. The sense of touch is lacking in most of the AR environment. We present an augmented reality system where people can see life-size virtual human avatar in a real environment, and be able to have a physical haptic interaction with the avatar.

"Tiger Training" explores the relationship between real and virtual worlds via interaction with virtual animals in immersive mixed reality environments. This interactive, participative installation encourages viewers to "train" virtual animals using hand signals and voice commands. Virtual tigers are not easily "trained" requiring learning appropriate ways to coax responsive actions.

This paper outlines new facilities within ubiquitous human media spaces supporting embodied interaction between humans and computation both socially and physically. We believe that the current approach to developing electronic based design environments is fundamentally defective with regard to support for multi-person multi-modal design interactions. In this paper, we present an alternative ubiquitous computing environment based on an integrated design of real and virtual worlds. We implement three different research prototype systems: the Virtual Kyoto Garden, touchy Internet, and the human pacman. The functional capabilities implemented in these systems include spatially-aware 3D navigation, tangible interaction, and ubiquitous human media spaces. Some of its details, benefits, and issues regarding design support are discussed

For mobile computing system such as wearable computer, one of the most critical hardware issues is the provision of electric power. Various different sources of power for wearable computer have been investigated; however, we are interested only in power that can be generated in-situ, such as human power. This paper describes a novel mean of multiple source human power generation for small wearable electronic devices, and then demonstrates the digital information transfer between wearable computing devices by using human skin as "antenna". There are a wide range of peripheral devices in a mobile computing system, such as sensors and identification memory tags. As the amount of such devices increases in a mobile computing design, there is a need for these devices to communicate efficiently with the central processing unit. Also, it is highly desirable that these devices could be conveniently connected to the wearable computer without many dangling wires. We developed a personal area network (PAN) system which attempts to interconnect such devices, and at the same time uses human body as communication channel. This system is in a way novel because it is totally powered by human motion.

A real-time system for capturing humans in 3D and placing them into a mixed reality environment is presented in this paper. The subject is captured by nine cameras surrounding her. Looking through a head-mounted-display with a camera in front pointing at a marker, the user can see the 3D image of this subject overlaid onto a mixed reality scene. The 3D images of the subject viewed from this viewpoint are constructed using a robust and fast shape-from-silhouette algorithm. The paper also presents several techniques to produce good quality and speed up the whole system. The frame rate of our system is around 25 fps using only standard Intel processor-based personal computers. Besides a remote live 3D conferencing and collaborating system, we also describe an application of the system in art and entertainment, named Magic Land, which is a mixed reality environment where captured avatars of human and 3D computer generated virtual animations can form an interactive story and play with each other. This system demonstrates many technologies in human computer interaction: mixed reality, tangible interaction, and 3D communication. The result of the user study not only emphasizes the benefits, but also addresses some issues of these technologies.

No abstract available.