BrightBoard: A Video-Augmented Environment

The goal of 'Computer Augmented Environments' is to bring computational power to everyday objects with which users are already familiar, so that the user interface to this computational power becomes almost invisible. Video is a very important tool in creating Augmented Environments and recent camera-manufacturing techniques make it an economically viable proposition in the general marketplace. BrightBoard is an example system which uses a video camera and audio feedback to enhance the facilities of an ordinary whiteboard, allowing a user to control a computer through simple marks made on the board. We describe its operation in some detail, and discuss how it tackles some of the problems common to these 'Video-Augmented Environments'.