A Tuple-Space Based Middleware for Collaborative Tangible User Interfaces

Several approaches have been made to establish a generic middleware for tangible user interfaces (TUI). They target toward the independence of application domains as well as flexibility in terms of the deployed sensor technology. For collaboration support TUIs have to allow the spatial distribution, asynchronous activities, and the dynamic modification of the TUI infrastructure, to name the most prominent ones. In this paper we present a framework approach based on the LINDA tuple space concept to meet these requirements. The implemented TUIpist framework deploys arbitrary sensor technology for any type of application and actuators in distributed environments. We demonstrate a use case, in order to proof the concept in actual work settings, and to demonstrate the adaptability of the approach.