Renita Machado and Robert Murimi are in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NJ Institute of Technology in Newark. The title of their paper, presented by Machado, is “RealBook – Reading a book through the eyes of reality.”
RealBook focuses on the use of wearable computers to convert the experience of reading a book into images and sound. They propose the use of an augmented reality system made up of a head-mounted display [with camera sensor], headphones, a physical book, and RealBook software. The latter is meant to augment the pleasures of reading a book.
They haven’t built it yet, but the most interesting thing they want it to do is convert events in a book images and sounds. They’ll use animation, which they test by performing participatory design (preliminary studies that produce, effectively, storyboards). The software needed will need to display enough animation to convey the meaning/flow of the book.
They want to encourage healthy competition among potential manufacturers of this thing. It could potentially apply not only to fiction but to non-fiction as well – textbooks, for example! Interesting.
The closest resemblance to this work is Magic Book, a tool to view illustrations in books in both augmented reality and virtual reality views. RealBook would be primarily entertainment, though, Machado emphasized.
[vz: sounds fascinating. Sci-fi. I want to play with this thing, and am impatient for it to get built.]
