The focus of this study is on the design of blended physical and electronic spaces that are to be used by people. The domain of the work is that of augmented reality systems for social interaction. We define augmented reality systems as those that combine the real and the virtual, are interactive, and are registered in three-dimensions. One common example of an augmented reality system allows the user to see virtual objects superimposed on an image of the physical space. In examining the design and construction of such a blended space, we will begin by looking at the spatial relationships and social usage of electronic and physical spaces.

The notion of breaking away from the traditional rules governing physical environments is of particular interest. Augmented reality spaces allow for the creation of fluid and fantastical environments. Also, these augmented spaces provide a highly expressive medium for experimenting with form and function.

The three areas described in this proposal were chosen to explore the design, and social interactions for an augmented space. Area I examines the construction and use of inhabited electronic spaces. Area II looks at the form, construction, and use of physical spaces. Finally, area III examines sensing techniques necessary for linking the virtual and the physical.

Judith Donath

Assistant Professor, MIT Media Laboratory

This area surveys how people construct, inhabit, and communicate with each other in various electronic spaces. The study begins with text-only forums such as chat rooms. MUD’s extended this metaphor through the use of shared objects and fantastical descriptions of environments as well as a set of tools for constructing new environments. Graphical interfaces have made social patterns and cues more salient in online communities. They have introduced the notion of proximity and embodiment in on-line spaces, whereby a person can see the objects they interact with as they move through different locations.

Electronic spaces, however, no longer reside entirely in the computer. More and more, we are creating interfaces that take advantage of the physical affordances of our environment. Further readings in this area that explore the idea of context aware systems as well as the use of spatial cognition for navigating, populating, and interacting in virtually augmented spaces.

The written requirement for the main area will consist of a paper.

Signature: Date:

Donath, Judith S. Inhabiting the Virtual City: The design of social environments for electronic communities, MIT PhD Thesis, 1996.

Bruckman, Amy and Resnick, M. The Media Moo Project: Construction and professional community. Convergence 1:1. Spring 1995.

Cherny, Lynn. The MUD Register: Conversational modes of action in a text-based virtual reality. PhD dissertation. Stanford University, 1995.

Donath, Judith S. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In Smith, M. and Kollock, P. (eds.) Communities in Cyberspace. Routledge: University of California Press, pp. 29-59, 1998.

Kollock, Peter and Smith, Marc. Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. Computer- Mediated Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995.

Schiano, Diane J. and White, Steve. The First Novel Truth of CyberSpace: People are people (even when they MOO). Proceedings of CHI’98.

Bly, S.A., Harrion, S.R., and Irwin, S. Media spaces: Video, audio, and computing. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 28-47, 1993.

Greenhalgh, Chris and Benford Steve. Supporting Rich and Dynamic Communication in Large-Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments. Presence, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999.

Morningstar, Chip and Farmer, F. The lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat. Cyberspace: First steps. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990.

Rossney, R. Metaworlds. Wired 4.06, p.140, June 1996.

Waters, R. and Barrus, J. Sharing Virtual Worlds. IEEE Spectrum, March 1997.

Billinghurst, M. and Kato, H. Collaborative Mixed Reality. Mixed Reality: Merging real and virtual worlds. pp. 261-284, 1999.

Buxton, W., Living in Augmented Reality. Ubiquitous Media and Reactive Environments. In K. Finn, A. Sellen & S. Wilber (Eds.). Video Mediated Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, pp. 363-384, 1997.

Cooperstock, J., et.al. Evolution of a Reactive Environment. Proceedings of CHI’95, May 1995.

Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., and Sekigmann, D. Knowledge-Based Augmented Reality. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 36, No. 7, July 1993.

Ishii, H. and Ullmer, B. Tangible Bits: Towards seamless interfaces between people, bits, and atoms. Proceedings of CHI ‘97.

Krueger, Myron. Artificial Reality II, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.

Mynatt, E., Back, M., and Want, R. Designing Audio Aura. Proceedings of CHI’98.

Picard, R. and Healey, J. Affective Wearables. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Wearable Computers. October 1997.

Weiser, M. The Computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American. 265(3), pp.94-104, 1991.

George Liaropoulos-Legendre

Assistant Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Architecture influences how people perceive a space and people influence the creation of the architecture around them.Understanding how people build, use, and understand physical space is essential in realizing the potential of spaces that blend the physical and the virtual.

These readings emphasize the perceptual, cultural, and symbolic dimensions of space and form. They form a grounding for the exploration of physical and virtual environments.

Many virtual spaces today have incorporated the spatial and organizational metaphors of physical spaces. However, these metaphors do not always work because the laws and constraints of virtual environments differ from those of physical environments. This area of study serves as a foundation for creating a vocabulary of architectural relationships for these hybrid spaces.

The written area for the supporting contextual area will consist of a paper in conjunction with a project.

Signature Date

Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. New York: Orion Press, 1964.

Blau, Eve and Kaufman, Edward. Architecture and its Image. Montreal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture, 1989.

Colquhoun, Alan. Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern architecture and historical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.

Evans, Robert. The Projective Cast: Architecture and its three geometries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.

Loos, Adolf. Spoken into the Void. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.

Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form.

Rossi, Aldo. A Scientific Autobiography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.

Rowe, Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, and other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976.

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.

Venturi, Robert. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972.

Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, buildings, construction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books, 1961.

Koolhaas, R. Delirious New York: A retroactive manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Oxford University, 1978.

Whyte, William H. City: Rediscovering the Center. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Joe Paradiso

Research Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory

Augmented reality systems typically need to know the translational and rotational displacements between the participant and the objects in the environment in order to register the virtual and the physical spaces. This area examines sensing technology specifically for finding people and objects in a space.

The study surveys existing passive environment, active environment, and beacon-type sensor systems. Examples of passive environment sensors are inertial sensors such as accelerometers as well as tilt sensors, magnetic compasses, and optical/vision systems. Active environment systems include systems such as radar and ultrasound. Beacon-type systems may utilize some active environment techniques, but differ in that they modify the environment with markers or beacons in determined locations. Examples of such systems are GPS, LORAN, as well as other RF, ultrasound, vision with coded targets, and IR location systems.

Further study in this area involves exploring models for organizing, prioritizing, and interpreting information from several sensing units for the creation of hybrid sensing systems.

The written area for the supporting technical area will consist of experiments and evaluation of a set of sensing designs.

Signature Date

Aggarwal, J.K. and Cai, Q. Human Motion Analysis: A review. Computer Vision and Image Understanding. Vol. 73, No. 3, March 1999, pp.428-440.

Azuma, R.T., A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence, Vol. 6, No. 4, August 1997.

Baxter, Larry. Capacitive Sensing. New York: IEEE Press, 1997.

Foxlin, E., Harrington, M., and Pfeifer, G. Constellation: A wide-range wireless motion-tracking system for augmented reality and virtual set applications. Siggraph’98.

Fraden, Jacob. Handbook of Modern Sensors. New York: Springer-Verlang, 1996.

Intille, S.S., Davis, J.W., and Bobick, Aaron. Real-Time Closed-World Tracking. MIT Media Laboratory Perceptual Computing Section Technical Report No. 403, November 1996.

Kaplan, Elliot D. Understanding GPS: Principles and applications. Boston: Artech House, 1996.

Kim, D. Richards, S.W., and Caudell, T.P. An Optical Tracker for Augmented Reality and Wearable Computers. Proceedings of IEEE 1997 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium.

Lawrence, Anthony. Modern Inertial Technology: Navigation, guidance, and control. New York: Springer-Verlang, 1993.

Mackenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.

Murry, H. and Schneider, M. Virtual Reality Position Tracking. Circuit Cellar INK, Issue #60, July 1995, pp. 24-29.

Paradiso, J, Sparacino, F. Optical Tracking for Music and Dance Performance. Optical 3-D Measurement Techniques IV, A. Gruen, H. Kahmen eds., Herbert Wichmann Verlag, Heidelberg Germany, pp. 11-18 (1997).

Petruzzelis, Thomas. The Alarm, Sensor, and Security Circuit Cookbook. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Rekimoto, J. NaviCam: A Magnifying Glass Approach to Augmented Reality. Presence, Vol. 6, No. 4, August 1997.

Reynolds, Matt. A Phase Measurement Radio Positioning System for Indoor Use. M.Eng Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999.

Verplaetse, C.J. Inertial-Optical Motion -Estimating Camera for Electronic Cinematography. Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1997.

Ward, A., Jones, A., and Hopper, A. A New Location Technique for the Active Office. IEEE Personal Communications, Vol. 4, No. 5, October 1997, pp. 42-47.

Werb, Jay and Lanzi, Colin. Designing a Positioning System for Finding Things and People Indoors. IEEE Spectrum, September 1998, pp. 71-78.

Assistant Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

George Liaropoulos-Legendre is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the GSD. He teaches in the core design sequence and offers instruction in computer applications to design. His present research at the GSD focuses on multimedia, computation and geometry. He teaches introductory digital media courses and advanced seminar courses on mathematical and algorithmic approaches to complex form work. Recent course offerings include Introduction to Visual Studies and Architecture, Fundamentals of Computer-Aided Design, Advanced Digital Media, On Growth and Form, and Advanced Geometric Modeling.

His award-winning multimedia productions with the Digital Design Information group of the GSD have been recently exhibited in Florence, Italy and Stuttgart, Germany.

He is currently working on a paper and pursuing a patent for a new model of oblique projection software developed with Wei-Li Liu '94. Prior to joining the GSD, Liaropoulos-Legendre was affiliated with Gwathmey Siegel & Associates architects in New York in 1994-95. Liaropoulos-Legendre received the BArch from the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville and the MArch from the GSD.

Curriculum Vitae can be reached from:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/info/directory/faculty/liaropoulos/index.html