Papers
	CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Minneapolis, Minnesota 20-25 April 2002 © 2002 ACM 417kb Illuminating Clay: A 3-D Tangible Interface for Landscape Analysis Ben Piper, Carlo Ratti* and Hiroshi Ishii * University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ABSTRACT This paper describes a novel system for the real-time computational analysis of landscape models. Users of the system – called Illuminating Clay – alter the topography of a clay landscape model while the changing geometry is captured in real-time by a ceiling-mounted laser scanner. A depth image of the model serves as an input to a library of landscape analysis functions. The results of this analysis are projected back into the workspace and registered with the surfaces of the model. We describe a scenario for which this kind of tool has been developed and we review past work that has taken a similar approach. We describe our system architecture and highlight specific technical issues in its implementation. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits of the system in combining the tangible immediacy of physical models with the dynamic capabilities of computational simulations.