Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Volume 2010, Article ID 657937, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2010/657937 Research Article Advancing Large Interactive Surfaces for Use in the Real World Jens Teichert, Marc Herrlich, Benjamin Walther-Franks, Lasse Schwarten, Sebastian Feige, Markus Krause, and Rainer Malaka Research Group Digital Media, TZI, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to Markus Krause, phateon@tzi.de Received 14 July 2009; Revised 2 March 2010; Accepted 26 May 2010 Academic Editor: Manfred Tscheligi Copyright © 2010 Jens Teichert et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Interactive surfaces are only just beginning to break into the market, and they still do not offer the advanced functionality demonstrated with many lab prototypes. The path from a prototype system to a finished product for use in real-world scenarios is a long one, and many obstacles must be overcome. The design of an interactive multitouch table had to address issues like optical recognition, hardware design, and ergonomics. This paper describes in detail the construction of a large, robust multi-touch table called mrT. It will show how to solve major problems of the diffuse illumination technique and other challenges of constructing a large-screen, high-resolution, self-contained interactive multitouch surface that not only serves as a development system but can be deployed in the real-world. Additionally, to further motivate some of the design decisions, especially why the diffuse illumination technology was chosen, this paper will discuss related on-going research projects on the application side. 1. Introduction Nearly twenty years after its invention [1] in the 1960s the first marketed integrated mouse was shipped with a Xerox Star 8010 Information System in 1981. Just one year later in 1982 a new paradigm of human computer interaction was described [2] and firstly implemented in 1985 [3], the multi-touch table. Again twenty years later we are looking at a technology starting to change the way of human-machine interaction once more. As the invention of the mouse shows, user interfaces need well-designed hardware to fulfill their purpose. Especially for emerging interface technologies, developing and improving the hardware side are just as important as considering the software side. This is certainly the case with interactive smart surfaces. First commercial products like JazzMutant’s Lemur or Microsoft’s Surface are already available for consumers but tend to be insufficient for many scientific and serious professional use cases, due to their restrictions in robustness, optical precision, or screen size. Until high-end commercial devices will be widely available, there is a need to design adequate multi-touch solutions to drive the next generation of interactive applications, in many different areas from geographic data visualization and planning applications to collaborative design, games, 3d modeling, and animation. High-quality devices are needed as a testbed for inventing and refining those applications. While it is possible and practical to develop applications on not fully developed hardware, extrapolating and anticipating future develop- ments are more complex and less convincing than using sophisticated systems. This work will describe the construction process of an advanced multi-touch table (Figure 1) for scientific and professional use as well as emerging problems and their solutions. The mrT is a unique system regarding screen size, technical robustness, and optical precision in terms of resolution and infrared light distribution. Furthermore, this paper will present some of the latest research projects on the applicationside and how they will benefit from the use of DI technology in general and the mrT design in particular. 2. Related Work Although multi-touch interaction just recently started to get attention from public media, it has a scientific history. Various techniques with different characteristics exist and