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Implementation of a Framework of Tangible User Interfaces

This work deals with the foundations for the development of a framework for Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) for process modelling. It presents a model for representing TUIs and their containing information, which is necessary for the computer aided identification of the TUIs. It has to be guaranteed, that it will not be necessary for the end-user to learn the handling of any modelling tool, instead of that, all possible resources of human creativity must be avail-able for the design process. In order to achieve this, the use of TUIs was selected. The concept of the TUIpist-Framework is proposed and a built proof of concept prototype is discussed. The main objective of the work is determining the identity of physical objects using a hard-ware abstraction layer. The following information has to be made available independent upon used sensor technology by the framework: Identification and position of the objects as well as their relationships to other elements and/or the elements contained in the object itself - if it is used as a container. The flexibility of frameworks is realized by appropriate modularity to application programs. Further, independence of the used sensor technology is guaranteed and thus the exchangeability of the underlying identification technology is enabled. The fundamental characteristics of modelling languages consist of illustrating requirements, structure and behaviour of systems. The rising complexity of software systems makes using modelling languages essential, only this way allows illustrating a system precise and under-standable for all participants. The framework tries to establish a connection between the traditional process modelling using physical objects on a workbench and an information-processing digital unit. Therefore re-sulted an opportunity for modelling with tangible real objects including synchronous process-ing by a distributed application. The API (Application Programming Interface) serves the supply of programming interfaces, which describes the data e.g. the recordings of a camera in such a way that these can be processed efficiently by an application. Communication between recognition technology and modelling application has been realized with Java. A framework, the TUIpist-Framework, has been implemented in the context of this thesis.

Florian Georg Furtmüller