C-Slate: A Multi-Touch and Object Recognition System for Remote Collaboration using Horizontal Surfaces

We introduce C-Slate, a new vision-based system, which utilizes stereo cameras above a commercially available tablet technology to support remote collaboration. The horizontally mounted tablet provides the user with high resolution stylus input, which is augmented by multi-touch interaction and recognition of untagged everyday physical objects using new stereo vision and machine learning techniques. This provides a novel and interesting interactive tabletop arrangement, capable of supporting a variety of fluid multi-touch interactions, including symmetric and asymmetric bimanual input, coupled with the potential for incorporating tangible objects into the user interface. When used in a remote context, these features are combined with the ability to see visual representations of remote users´ hands and remote physical objects placed on top of the surface. This combination of bimanual and tangible interaction and sharing of remote gestures and physical objects provides a new way to collaborate remotely, complementing existing channels such as audio and video conferencing.