Bringing the Marks on a Whiteboard
to Electronic Life
Eric Saund
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Norbert Streitz, Jane Siegel, Volker Hartkopf, Shin'ichi Konomi (Eds.)
Cooperative Buildings --
Integrating Information, Organizations, and Architecture
Second International Workshop, CoBuild'99
Pittsburgh, USA, October 1999
Proceedings
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1670
Springer
Abstract
This paper discusses our implementation and experience with a camera-based
whiteboard scanner. The ZombieBoard system (so called because it brings to
electronic life the marks on a whiteboard) is built into both the physical
environment and the information space, while augmenting and linking the two.
Computer vision underlies two key technology components. First, image
mosaicing is used to obtain high-resolution images of large surfaces using
relatively low-resolution cameras. Second, real time activity analysis and
line drawing analysis enable a Diagrammatic User Interface whereby commands
are issued to the system by drawing on the whiteboard itself. The system has
been in routine use at our research center for two years and has demonstrated
the value of this approach to linking whiteboards with the electronic document
world.
Paper (MS Word, 348K)