This paper presents an interactive desk that augments physical books that are placed upon its surface with multimedia content and interactive applications. Such content is dynamically displayed in augmentation to the currently open page of the book, that is, aligned in realtime with its 2D orientation upon the desk. The rendered applications are controlled by the users with the use of a stylus, both through contact with the book or desk, as well as, through a small vocabulary of gestures performed with the stylus. The evaluation of the accuracy, robustness, and performance of the proposed computer vision modules supporting this interaction are reported through quantitative experiments. In addition, the system usability was validated and the suitability of educational applications was explored through pilot applications, which include music and digital animation on pages, content-based multimedia presentation, context-based online search, as well as, note-taking through handwriting.

An active field of research today is the technological enrichment of everyday activities using augmented reality and ambient intelligence technologies. To this end, augmenting dinner tables is a challenging task, requiring a high-quality user experience unobtrusively supporting and enhancing the user’s main goal: eating and socializing. This work presents an augmented restaurant table, facilitating customers’ ordering and enhancing their experience through entertainment and socialization features, as well as through interaction with physical objects placed upon the table surface.

Augmented Reality environments have shown to be relevant and valuable in many instances of the educational process. Accounting for the advantages and conventional gains of learning through physical books and printed matter in general, this paper presents an approach towards augmenting both such media. This work has elementary school as a con-text and presents an approach towards augmenting a physical book and associated learning cards, with the purpose of providing a playful approach to learning the alphabet. The two principal activities involved in studying from an elementary school book are augmented: learning, during which the student receives information about letters, phonemes, and words, and practicing where questions are asked to the young student in order to consolidate the recently acquired knowledge. The proposed implementation is evaluated initially as to its performance and accuracy and then as to its usability and suitability for efficient and intuitive interaction.

This system paper describes two educational mini-games (a multiple-choice quiz and a geography-related game) that combine learning and ambient technology. Their innovative feature is that they offer physical interaction through printed cards on a tabletop setup, where a simple webcam monitors the table's surface and identifies the thrown cards. Following a brief discussion of ambient technology integration in the environment, the overall concept of these games is described and potential future improvements are outlined.

This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technologies in the context of child development, and presents the methodology and preliminary results of the development of an augmented interactive table which offers to preschool children various AmI educative and entertaining applications. The overall objective of this work is to assess how AmI technologies can contribute to the enhancement of children’s skills and abilities through common play activities during the various stages of their growth and development.

The theme of this paper is an exhibition of prototypical interactive systems with subjects drawn from ancient Macedonia, named "Macedonia from fragments to pixels". Since 2010, the exhibition is hosted by the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki and is open daily to the general public. Up to now, more than 165.000 people have visited it. The exhibition comprises 7 interactive systems which are based on some research outcomes of the Ambient Intelligence Programme of the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas. The digital content of these systems includes objects from the Museum’s permanent collection and from Macedonia.

Today, augmented reality is evolving towards sophisticated approaches exploiting the opportunities offered by immersive environments and high quality 3D graphics. Such systems can prove to be very useful in the context of education, especially when learning involves reading and writing activities. However, the majority of existing systems relies on touch-based interaction, or on interaction with proprietary technological artifacts. This paper presents an approach to enhancing reading and writing on physical books through smart augmentation. It is based on the intuitive and unobtrusive monitoring of students gestures during reading and writing activities through cameras, facilitating context-aware content sensitive assistance without requiring any special interaction device.

This paper discusses a line of research targeted to investigate and introduce innovative solutions for efficient learning in smart environments through integrating AmI technology in the learning process. Following a discussion of current approaches to technology integration in the classroom, the overall concept of the Student-Centric “Intelligent” Classroom and the related software are described. Potential future improvements are outlined.

This paper presents the application of the PaperView system in the domain of cartographic heritage. PaperView is a multi-user augmented-reality system for supplementing physical surfaces with digital information, through the use of pieces of plain paper that act as personal, location-aware, interactive screens. By applying the proposed method of reality augmentation in the cartographic heritage domain, the system provides the capability of retrieving multimedia information about areas of interest, overlaying information on a 2D or 3D (i.e., scale model) map, as well as comparing different versions of a single map. The technologies employed are presented, along with the interactive behavior of the system, which was instantiated and tested in three setups: (i) a map of Macedonia, Greece, including ancient Greek cities with archeological interest; (ii) a glass case containing a scale model and (iii) a part of Rigas Velestinlis’ Charta. The first two systems are currently installed and available to the general public at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece, as part of a permanent exhibition of interactive systems.

This paper describes the outcomes stemming from the work of a multidisciplinary R&D project of ICS-FORTH, aiming to explore and experiment with novel interactive museum exhibits, and to assess their utility, usability and potential impact. More specifically, four interactive systems are presented in this paper which have been integrated, tested and evaluated in a dedicated, appropriately designed, laboratory space. The paper also discusses key issues stemming from experience and observations in the course of qualitative evaluation sessions with a large number of participants.