Trackmate

For over 20 years researchers have been looking at ways to go beyond the mouse and keyboard to interact with computers. One of the most promising areas has been tangible user interfaces; physical objects directly coupled with digital information. These new interfaces have typically required expensive technologies and complex installation procedures, limiting them to the context of specialized research labs and museums.

Trackmate is an open-source initiative to create an inexpensive, do-it-yourself tangible tracking system. The Trackmate tracker allows any computer to recognize tagged objects and their corresponding position, rotation, and color information when placed on a surface. With over 280 trillion possible visual markers, each tagged object can be unique in the world and work seamlessly across any Trackmate system. Trackmate sends all object data via LusidOSC (a protocol layer for unique spatial input devices), allowing any LusidOSC-based application to use the spatial object information.