CheckMate: Exploring a Tangible Augmented Reality Interface for Remote Interaction

Sebastian Günther, Florian Müller, Martin Schmitz, Jan Riemann, Niloofar Dezfuli, Markus Funk, Dominik Schön, Max Mühlhäuser

CHI EA 2018

Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

PDF DOI

TL;DR

What we did: We built CheckMate, a tangible Augmented Reality interface that integrates 3D printed objects and touch-enabled surfaces for remote interaction.

What we found: We found that our system significantly enhances the user experience by providing tangible interactions that closely mimic co-located communication, as evidenced by positive feedback from participants in our exploratory study.

Takeaway: Our work demonstrates that combining tangible user interfaces with Augmented Reality can improve remote collaboration experiences, potentially applicable beyond gaming to various interactive scenarios.

Abstract

The digitalized world comes with increasing Internet capabilities, allowing to connect persons over distance easier than ever before. Video conferencing and similar online applications create great benefits bringing people who physically cannot spend as much time as they want virtually together. However, such remote experiences can also tend to lose the feeling of traditional experiences. People lack direct visual presence and no haptic feedback is available. In this paper, we tackle this problem by introducing our system called CheckMate. We combine Augmented Reality and capacitive 3D printed objects that can be sensed on an interactive surface to enable remote interaction while providing the same tangible experience as in co-located scenarios. As a proof-of-concept, we implemented a sample application based on the traditional chess game.