Mobile Computing

On November 26, 2001, The Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT), Georgia Tech, and Shepherd Center received a $5 million, five-year federal grant to develop applications of wireless technologies to enhance the independence of people with physical and cognitive disabilities."To promote universal access to mobile wireless technologies and explore their innovative applications in addressing the needs of people with disabilities." 

variety of projects

Billy

Gizmondo

Bragfish

A collaboration with Blair MacIntyre and the Augmented Environments Lab (AEL)

The goal of this project was to design a game involving both players in the physical environment with mobile devices as well as remote players accessing the game through a traditional desktop computer. We also realized that a limitation of such games can often be the changing bandwidth and reliability of various wireless networks (e.g. WiFi versus 3G versus Edge etc.). Our aim, therefore, was to incorporate the affordances and limitations of the wireless network(s) directly into the game design.

In this project we explored a concept for augmented reality entertainment, called AR Karaoke, where users perform their favorite dramatic scenes with virtual actors. AR Karaoke is the acting equivalent of traditional karaoke, where the goal is to facilitate an acting experience for the user that is entertaining for both the user and audience. The main challenge in creating an AR Karaoke prototype is to develop an easy to learn user interface that helps the performer understand the timing, body movement, and dialog for their character.

Augmented Reality (AR) technology merges the physical and the virtual worlds and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) systems (such as Second Life and World of Warcraft) allow people to communicate, collaborate, and play games with each other inside a 3D virtual world. Users would like to access these virtual worlds while they are out in the world, but the small screen and limited interfaces on mobile devices are insufficient for interacting with existing MMO systems.

Our MirrorWorld system combines virtual environments that are analogues of real physical locations with various content and information sources that have a spatial or location component. This MirrorWorld allows us to create applications that combine the virtual and physical worlds for mobile users. The goal is to allow groups of affiliated people (e.g. Georgia Tech football fans, Facebook friends, College of Computing researchers, visitors to Atlanta etc.) to create and consume location based augmented reality content.

Maribeth Gandy presented on an Augmented Reality panel for the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds April 24th 2009 Washington D.C.

Maribeth Gandy and Brian Davidson presented their project (a collaboration with Blair MacIntyre and the Augmented Environments Lab) titled "Mirror Worlds: Combining the Real and Virtual Worlds via Mobile Augmented Reality" at CTIA on March 31 2009 in Las Vegas, NV

Maribeth Gandy gave a tutorial on Wearable Computing for Persons with Disabilities at the International Symposium for Wearable Computing (ISWC 2007) on Oct. 11, 2007 in Boston, MA.

IMTC researcher, Maribeth Gandy, will present a tutorial on Wearable Computing for individuals with disabilities on the afternoon of October 14 at the ISWC 2006 conference in Montreaux, Switzerland.