HuddleLamp combines all your Apple mobile devices into a massive multitouch canvas

HuddleLamp (image 002)

What if you could combine screens of iOS devices sitting on your table into one massive multitouch enabled canvas that you could interact with?

That’s what researchers with the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the University of Konstanz in Germany set out to create with their noteworthy HuddleLamp project.

Basically a tabletop with a built-in 3D camera that sits above, the HuddleLamp uses smart software which analyzes RGB and depth data to not only detect your mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, but also track hand movement and determine their relative position to one another.

The results are impressive: the HuddleLamp can detect interactions above and between displays so you can swipe and toss information from one device to another, render a huge map across the devices with each screen showing only a portion of the map and what not.

The system bypasses the need for any special software on the devices and you don’t need to attach special markers either. As silly as it sounds, the HuddleLump project could see uses in specialized markets like medicine, CAD, science and so forth.

Watch the video embedded below.

Again, these spatially-aware mobile displays allow for ad-hoc around-the-table collaboration, but without an interactive tabletop. The project uses completely bespoke software systems based on a web-based architecture and JavaScript API for future HuddleLamp applications.

The project’s white paper mentions five examples of cross-device interaction techniques so give it a read to learn more about this promising technology.

[HuddleLamp.org via Ubergizmo]