CRISTAL: Design and Implementation of a Remote Control System Based on a Multi-touch Display

While most homes are inherently social places, existing devices designed to control consumer electronics typically only support single user interaction. Further, as the number of consumer electronics in modern homes increases, people are often forced to switch between many controllers to interact with these devices. To simplify interaction with these devices and to enable more collaborative forms of device control, we propose an integrated remote control system, called CRISTAL (Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces). CRISTAL enables people to control a wide variety of digital devices from a centralized, interactive tabletop system that provides an intuitive, gesture-based interface that enables multiple users to control home media devices through a virtually augmented video image of the surrounding environment. A preliminary user study of the CRISTAL system is presented, along with a discussion of future research directions.