Research Project: MEMORY BLOCKS / KNOWLEDGE VOXELS

Imagine being capable of storing/retrieving multi-media data from familiar things in the path to work: buildings, corners, trees or flowers... anything around you can be a "scaffold" to organize your personal data. This is an alternative to the intangible "cloud" based on the idea of superimposing virtual 3d "data containers" onto real space. We propose to design, prototype and study a format to represent, and an interface to browse dense databases based on the idea of superimposing volumetric virtual objects (or “Memory Blocks”) onto real space. The “method of loci” [1] is a mnemonic technique that relies on human capacity to quickly and efficiently store new information on an imaginary 3d space (or “memory palace”): the goal of this research is to take this technique to the next level by making this “memory palace” an interpersonal 3d space to store and retrieve information instead of a personal, mental one. This will be done by merging spatial augmented reality, mixed reality and tangible interfaces developed in our lab. We first plan to make these volumetric Memory Blocks (MB) accessible simultaneously to several people in a large room (or even in public spaces); then, by using Web 2.0 technologies, we plan to make these MB the support of online collaborative bookmarking and information sharing.