A Ubiquitous Space User Interface (UUI) of Ubiquitous Fashionable Computer in a Ubiquitous Computing Environment, U-TOPIA

The interactive ubiquitous computing project, U-TOPIA, explores new possibilities for people working together in technology-rich spaces. Ubiquitous fashionable computers have more to do with form factor and usability than with computing. This paper focuses on our effort to overcome the challenges in a limited user interface of a wearable computer by providing a new interface, called Ubiquitous space User Interface (UUI) and its H/W platforms. Most portable devices like as a wearable computer have only small-sized display and limited input devices, which are definitely insufficient to interact with various peripheral modules, and send a user’s intention to the other users. We attempt to resolve this problem by making full use of spatial resources inside the testbed room and mapping mouse operations to user’s gesture. In the space based on UUI, a user can express one’s intention easily and succeed to mouse device which is the most popular input device by using one’s gesture. To explain the practical use of a wearable computer platform, UFC, and the user-friendly interaction based on the UUI, we implemented a ubiquitous testbed where multiple UFC users interact with various computing devices or other UFC users.