DynaTouch: A Remote Ray-Casting Based Interface with Tactile Feedback

In this work we present a novel human-computer interface that dynamically maps the user's view of a distant display screen onto a planar transparent surface that is within arm's reach. By mean of a color and depth camera, we are able to transform the planar surface into a touch sensitive working area, used to interact with the distant display. The surface acts as a touch-screen where the contact position corresponds to objects shown on the distant display along the user's visual line of sight. After a required calibration with an external display, the camera tracks the nger's motion on or near the touch-screen, as well as the user's head position. This combination allows the software-developed system to build the necessary correspondence between the touch-screen, the user's line of sight and the external display, so that the user interacts based on the objects he sees through the planar surface. This interface can be used e ectively as a virtual touch surface for any external display, regardless of its size. This reveals to be particularly e ective for high-resolution displays where, due to their large size, some areas are often not directly accessible. Besides, with our prototype we prove that it is possible to obtain reasonable results with cheap and widely available components, thus making it accessible also for non-professional users.