Workspaces Hyper - Bonds – Multimodal Interfaces for Collaborative Workspaces of the Future

2 Multimodal Man-Machine Interfaces for learning and working are getting more and more important if we foresee, as we do, a closer integration of different real and virtual realities, mixed realities. To make these multimodal interfaces, based on mechatronic principles easy to use as a developer and user, we need more general theoretical concepts and practical modules. A generalized concept to blend physical systems with their virtual counterparts, being their computer-internal representation or a functional continuation will be introduced. Hyper-Bonds combine the unified abstract systems representation of bond graphs with their concrete implementation in a " hyper-connection " between physical phenomena of the computer-external environment and the logical structure of computer-internal representations in a vivid way. The theory is laid down and a first application in a learning and working environment for automation technologa, allowing a free determination of boundaries, is shown. Further applications and extensions are highlighted. 1. Introduction Mixed realities are becoming more and more popular and have some interesting perspectives for tele-service and tele-learning. They represent a kind of coupling of real world phenomena to various information, represented within a computer. This might take place in the sense that information is displayed and overlaid to real phenomena (see Augmented Reality research: Weiser 1993, Wellner 1993), in the sense that real phenomena are used as handles to manipulate information (see Graspable User Interface research: Fitzmaurice et al 1995) or in the sense that both worlds are bi-directional tight together (Ishii & Ullmer 1997, Brave et al 1998). The focus of this paper is the later approach.