ITR: Environment Management for Hybrid User Interfaces

这是为期三年的持续奖励的第一年资助。混合用户界面将多个显示器和交互设备结合在一起，以从各自的优势中受益。例如，可以构建混合用户界面，其中多个用户查看一个或多个常见显示，诸如壁挂式数据可视化和桌面虚拟工作台3D模型。与此同时，每个用户可能会看到互补的私人资料，根据自己的信息需求进行定制，并覆盖并注册到普通显示器上-在个人、跟踪、手持或头戴式透明显示器上呈现的增强现实。这个项目解决了环境管理问题，即在混合用户界面中管理大量显示器上的大量虚拟对象的任务。环境管理比当前窗口管理中涉及的任务更复杂，如果要满足未来移动、协作用户的需求，则环境管理将特别具有挑战性，因为随着用户的移动，其与其他用户、显示器和交互设备的接近程度可能会迅速且不可预测地发生变化。这项工作探索了一种替代直接操作方法的方法，在这种方法中，基于知识的环境管理工具接管了许多低级别的任务，以避免让用户不堪重负。目标是通过使用户能够对其个人和共享工作环境的布局和内容施加更高级别的控制来提高用户的效率。该项目将开发混合用户界面和有效环境管理设施的基本概念，并将设计、演示和测试体现这些概念的研究原型。特别强调了协作、3D增强环境提出的问题，这些环境利用了广泛的显示器(持有、佩戴和静止)，包括创建增强现实的头跟踪透视显示器，其中虚拟对象与用户和其他物理对象共存于相同的周围空间。能够缩短任务执行时间、降低错误率或提高用户满意度的用户界面设计方法，对于提高我们在非传统协作移动计算世界中与信息和彼此交互的能力至关重要。

This is the first year funding of a three-year continuing award. Hybrid user interfaces combine together multiple displays and interaction devices to benefit from the advantages of each. For example, a hybrid user interface could be constructed in which multiple users view one or more common displays, such as a wall-mounted data visualization and a desk-top virtual workbench 3D model. At the same time, each user might see complementary private material, customized to her own information needs, and overlaid on and registered with the common displays---an augmented reality that is presented on personal, tracked, hand-held or head-worn see-through displays.This project addresses environment management, the task of managing large numbers of virtual objects on large numbers of displays in hybrid user interfaces. More complex than the tasks involved in current window management, environment management will be especially challenging if it is to address the needs of future mobile, collaborating users, whose proximity to other users, displays, and interaction devices may change rapidly and unpredictably as users move about. This work explores an alternative to direct manipulation approaches, in which knowledge-based environment management tools take over many low-level tasks to avoid overwhelming the user. The goal is to increase a user's effectiveness by making it possible for her to exert higher-level control over the layout and contents of her personal and shared work environment. This project will develop the underlying concepts for hybrid user interfaces and effective environment management facilities, and will design, demonstrate, and test research prototypes that embody these concepts. Special emphasis is placed on issues raised by collaborative, 3D augmented environments that exploit a wide range of displays (held, worn, and stationary), including head-tracked see-through displays that create augmented realities, in which virtual objects coexist in the same surrounding space as users and other physical objects. User interface design approaches that can promote shorter task performance time, lower error rate, or greater user satisfaction, will be vital for improving our ability to interact with information and with each other in the nontraditional world of collaborative mobile computing.