Recently came across an interesting paper which talks about creating easy instructions for users building or putting together many everyday objects.

Abstract
We present design principles for creating effective assembly instructions and a system that is based on these principles. The principles are drawn from cognitive psychology research which investigated people’s conceptual models of assembly and effective methods to visually communicate assembly information. Our system is
inspired by earlier work in robotics on assembly planning and in visualization on automated presentation design. Although other systems have considered presentation and planning independently, we believe it is necessary to address the two problems simultaneously in order to create effective assembly instructions. We describe the
algorithmic techniques used to produce assembly instructions given object geometry, orientation, and optional grouping and ordering constraints on the object’s parts. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to produce aesthetically pleasing and easy to follow instructions for many everyday objects.

If you’re interested, you can read the full paper at

• https://graphics.stanford.edu/…/assembly.pdf

or a local copy available at

• http://kf12.com/blogs/uploads/assembly.pdf

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The HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC introduces touch screen technology to the commodity market.

Touch and go with HP’s cool TouchSmart PC. This innovative, integrated desktop incorporates a PC, a 19″ touch screen, and a wireless keyboard and mouse1. The wide screen puts information, communication, and entertainment at your family’s fingertips.

Priced at $1899, features include

• AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-52
• 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM system memory
• 320GB hard drive
• Slot-loading SuperMulti DVD burner2 with LightScribe technology
• Touch enabled 19″ diagonal widescreen BrightView LCD
• NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics card with 256MB dedicated video memory (Up to 528MB Total
• Available Graphics memory as allocated by Windows Vista™.)
• Integrated 1.3-megapixel HP WebCam with built-in array microphone
• HP SmartCenter Button to launch interactive mode with one touch
• NTSC TV tuner and over-the-air ATSC high-definition television tuner
• Wireless keyboard and mouse, stylus, and Media Center Remote Control

More details at http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447010-0-0-225-121.html

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What is iBar ?

iBar is a system for the interactive design of any bar-counter. Integrated video-projectors can project any content on the milky bar-surface. The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter. Objects can be illuminated at their position or virtual objects can be “touched” with the fingers.

Find out more at http://www.i-bar.ch/en/info/

A combination of touch-screen and sound synthesis technology produces the reactable.

Visit the reactable web-site at http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/reactable/

The reactable is a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Also has a wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReacTable

An interesting innovative concept - draw an outline from a background image to make it a 3D textured model! Or you can use a blank view and just draw the shapes you want from scratch.

It’s an interesting approach which seems similar to what you could do with “teddy”

This is Archipelis - http://www.archipelis.com/

Main features:

Draw 2D shapes to build 3D objects

Re-position & re-shape the 3D objects

Automatic merging process

Multi-resolution management

Viewing modes: Wireframe, cartoon, environment map, stereo viewing in anaglyphic mode

Painting embossed (displaced) maps to create relief on the mesh

Save to the formats: .obj (Maya), .wrl (VRML), .off (OFF), .asc (for 3DS Max), .dxf (DXF), .x (Direct X), .stl (STL), .x3d (X3D) New

Possibility to include models into SketchUp (by Google) New

Automatic generation of program: C program for rendering models based on OpenGL New

and many more…

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