Ad-hoc Co-located Collaborative Work with Mobile Devices

Abstract

This paper presents how ad-hoc co-located collaborations can be supported with an arbitrary number of users that only have access to small-size mobile displays. Our approach is based on tracking of these personal displays that share the same information space. All displays involved in the collaboration act as autonomous windows on a set of data items (the information space) positioned on a shared virtual canvas. Data items are identified by their three-dimensional location in physical space and can be manipulated through the displays that serve as windows on the shared canvas. Each display is tracked in physical space and is aware of its own location. Since different mobile displays can access and manipulate the same information space, a distributed locking mechanism makes sure the data stays consistent during simultaneous access of data in this information space