HuddleLamp: Spatially-Aware Mobile Displays for Ad-hoc Around-the-Table Collaboration

We present HuddleLamp, a desk lamp with an integrated RGB-D camera that precisely tracks the movements and positions of mobile displays and hands on a table. This enables a new breed of spatially-aware multi-user and multi-device applications for around-the-table collaboration without an interactive tabletop. At any time, users can add or remove displays and reconfigure them in space in an ad-hoc manner without the need of installing any software or attaching markers. Additionally, hands are tracked to detect interactions above and between displays, enabling fluent cross-device interactions. We contribute a novel hybrid sensing approach that uses RGB and depth data to increase tracking quality and a technical evaluation of its capabilities and limitations. For enabling installation-free ad-hoc collaboration, we also introduce a web-based architecture and JavaScript API for future HuddleLamp applications. Finally, we demonstrate the resulting design space using five examples of cross-device interaction techniques.