Surround-see: enabling peripheral vision on smartphones during active use

  • Authors:
  • Xing-Dong Yang;Khalad Hasan;Neil Bruce;Pourang Irani

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada;University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada;University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada;University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 26th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Mobile devices are endowed with significant sensing capabilities. However, their ability to 'see' their surroundings, during active use, is limited. We present Surround-See, a self-contained smartphone equipped with an omni-directional camera that enables peripheral vision around the device to augment daily mobile tasks. Surround-See provides mobile devices with a field-of-view collinear to the device screen. This capability facilitates novel mobile tasks such as, pointing at objects in the environment to interact with content, operating the mobile device at a physical distance and allowing the device to detect user activity, even when the user is not holding it. We describe Surround-See's architecture, and demonstrate applications that exploit peripheral 'seeing' capabilities during active use of a mobile device. Users confirm the value of embedding peripheral vision capabilities on mobile devices and offer insights for novel usage methods.