Lift-and-Drop: Crossing boundaries in a multi-display environment by airlift

Many of the interactive environments surrounding us today consist of multiple mobile and/or stationary visual displays. However, interaction with such multi-display environments is still dominated by the personal computer paradigm - one user interacts with one single display at a time. In this paper first we present a new video-based input device called Airlift, which captures hands and fingertips independent from any display and therefore allows for consistent interaction across display boundaries. Second, we propose a system architecture for interaction spanning multiple displays. Third, we start to explore this new design space by proposing and evaluating a new interaction technique Lift-and-Drop for copying data from one display to another. According to the results of our study for the task considered the new technique is superior to other techniques based on traditional direct input devices which are limited to the surface of single displays like pen or touch.