MagicBoard: A contribution to an intelligent office environment

In this paper we describe an augmented reality tool for collaborative work called the MagicBoard. The MagicBoard is based on a ordinary white board which has been enhanced by a video projector and a steerable camera. A supervisor coordinates the cooperation of several modules including gesture recognition, nger tracking and white board scanning for digitalisation of the content. The gesture recognition module uses an approach based on local spatio-temporal appearance of activities. The tracking module is designed for use with cluttered backgrounds and changing lighting conditions. The white board scanner eliminates global luminosity diierences by adaptive thresholding and the result can serve to digitize the content of the board. The supervisor is based on a rule based architecture and is easy extendable. The selected modules t together to a compact system, that largely increases the functionality of a white board and make it an useful tool in the future ooce environments.