About

What is TaPuMa
TaPuMa is a digital, tangible public map that allows people to use their own objects to display pertinent information on the map.

Where does TaPuMa come from?
TaPuMa comes from the class MAS834 Tangible Interfaces in December 2006. Pranav Mistry, Chaochi Chang, Tsuyoshi Kuroki and Kahn Jekarl came up with the idea of TaPuMa and made a prototype of it, and submitted a paper to CHI Work-In-Progress. After the submission, the team has decided to take a next step to MIT TaPuMa.

Below example illustrates how TaPuMa will work in an airport.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lee has decided that he would like to have a cigarette but knows he must find a designated area to smoke.  He places his package of cigarettes on TaPuMa to find out where to smoke.  A radial menu appears around the package and displays two options: Smoking Areas and Stores that sell the types of cigarettes that Mr. Lee owns.  He selects Smoking Areas and then is directed to the closest designated smoking area.

MIT TaPuMa
MIT TaPuMa is a TaPuMa which are placed in MIT. MIT TaPuMa can be used by students, guests and neighbors of MIT. MIT TaPuMa may show information about:
- Activities, Events in MIT
- Researches in MIT
- iFind
- Available Public Transportations
  And so on.

Contributions of TaPuMa
From a practical viewpoint – TaPuMa is a renovated version of public map. Public maps can be seen in many places but they are static and dumb. TaPuMa provides context-aware functions on that and make them more helpful.

As a Tangible Interface – Tangible Interfaces uses special designed objects, like RFID-tagged plastic packs. TaPuMa is the first Tangible Interface system which can be used by everyday objects.

As a User Interface – TaPuMa realizes object-oriented interactions in the real world. Object-oriented interactions have become a popular way in GUI, since it can simplify the interaction and relief the ambiguity. Putting an object on TaPuMa is like a right-click on icons on a desktop.

Status

Current Status of TaPuMa
We made a prototype of TaPuMa using tagged objects, but now we are planning to use computer vision technology to recognize different objects, like MIT cards, T passes, Cell phones, Keys, Money, etc. on the map. Beyond that, we also want to explore gesture based interaction techniques.

Now we have started to raise UROPs to work with.

Downloads

coming soon

People

Pranav Mistry
Research Assistant, Ambient Intelligence, MIT Media Lab
pranav@media.mit.edu

Tsuyoshi Kuroki
Research Scientist, Canon Development Americas, inc
kuroki@media.mit.edu

Chaochi Chang
Research Assistant, Speech Interfaces, MIT Media Lab
ccchang@media.mit.edu

Li Bian
UROP, MIT Media Lab
libian@mit.edu

Links

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
www.mit.edu

Media Lab
www.media.mit.edu

Contact

Pranav Mistry
E15- 322, MIT Media Lab
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA

pranav@media.mit.edu

1-617-835-4030

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Last Updated 23rd January, 2007