Tangible Human-Computer Interfaces

Tangible Interfaces are a way of interacting with a virtual world through touching a display surface that represents a reality-virtuality window. Although some research studies have been done on topic by industry leaders like Microsoft, the existing technologies are too expensive and thus replaced by similar technologies.The solution to this problem would be an open hardware design that would eliminate licensing fees altogether and an open source software stack that would decrease the entry barrier to tangible application development. Research has shown an interest in the tangible interface market, but also a lack of products and open source software components since the departure of Microsoft Surface table.At the time of this research, there are no hardware designs available that are consistent with the software. The research goal is to develop a documented and repeatable hardware platform alongside with a software stack to allow developers to create applications for tangible interfaces. Research shows an increasing interest in tangible display technology: surface computing market is estimated to reach $26,206.29 Million by 2020. With majors like Microsoft leaving the field, there is a need in an open source solution that would cover the demand by minimising licensing costs.The result of this project would be a hardware building plan and accessible open software development library that would enable anyone to write applications for multitouch tangible interface