X-PLACES

Advanced Framework for Interactive and Multiuser Environments

Contact

Gavino Paddeu, valorisation@crs4.it

Challenge

In recent years the interest in interactive environments is greatly increased. Museum curators, showroom operators, hotels, stations and terminals want to catch the eye of their visitors by means of interactive multi-user installations, with social features, that involve people in an intuitive way. The natural interaction enables people to access and view contents using their own natural abilities: language and gestures. The gestural communication opens new scenarios in the design and testing of intelligent interactive environments

Overview

Xplaces is an open source framework designed to support software developers in various stages (from design to testing) of the creation of interactive collaborative applications. The software allows to easily integrate and manage sensors and devices using a simple event-handling function.

Innovative features

• supports a wide range of sensors such as RFID, thermometers, accelerometers, optical motion sensors, Arduino boards, X10, etc;
• supports natural interaction with tables, multiuser and multitouch walls, and touchless sensors like Kinect and Leap Motion;
• enables the development of mobile and social applications that can be used through smartphone;
• support for plug and play devices;
• multisensory interactive installation.

Potential users

Developers and experienced programmers.

Impact sectors

Museums – Domotics – e-Learning – Infotainment – Expo and Fairs – Interactive shops.

Other resources

1. https://github.com/crs4/xplaces
2. Massimo Deriu, Gavino Paddeu, Alessandro Soro. XPlaces: An Open Framework to Support the Digital Living at Home Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE/ACM Int’l Conference on Green Computing and Communications & Int’l Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing IEEE Computer Society pages 484–487 Washington, DC, USA – 2010.