Abstract
As digital entertainment applications evolve, there is a need for new kinds of platforms that can support shared media interactions for everyday consumers. In recent years this has resulted in the development of several technical approaches to digital media tables, but none of these early attempts point to a general purpose, economically viable media table system.

In this paper we present TViews, an extensible method and acoustic-based sensing framework for creating digital media tables that are designed to overcome the limitations of single purpose systems. The system provides a means for real-time multi-object tracking on the tabletop and for the management of large numbers of objects and applications across multiple platform instances. The objects can be physically customized to suit particular applications, and the table provides output via a coincident embedded display. By providing a general purpose solution for media table development, we give application designers the freedom to invent a broad range of media interactions and applications for everyday social environments, such as homes, classrooms and public spaces. We discuss our prototype applications for digital media browsing and game play, examining different approaches to mapping physical interaction objects to the media space as either generic controls or fixed function devices.

IEEE CG&A, Special Issue on Interacting with Digital Tabletops, vol. 26 no. 5 (September - October 2006), pp.47 - 55.
http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/journal/TviewsArch.pdf