Google opens up Interactive Spaces API

A neat little API has been delivered by Google, letting developers with an artistic license create…
An intriguing new open-sourced
framework from Google allows people and objects to be tracked
through space, allowing for immersive, interactive physical
spaces.
The Java-coded API and runtime environment project,
Interactive Spaces (staying true to Google’s
straight–talking naming policy) can be
used for tracking objects and people in a space and
providing virtual interactions between the two.
Ceiling-mounted cameras
track people walking on the floor through blob tracking. The
floor then presents a coloured circle underneath that person and
follows them around the room, wherever they
stand.
Keith Hughes, from Google’s Experience Engineering Team, explains the concept further in the blog announcement:
Interactive Spaces works by having “consumers” of events, like the floor, connect to “producers” of events, like those cameras in the ceiling. Any number of “producers” and “consumers” can be connected to each other, making it possible to create quite complex behavior in the physical space.
Interactive Spaces contains a collection of libraries for making all this interactivity possible, with a wide scope present within the project.
“Implementing an activity can
require anything from a few lines in a simple configuration file to
you creating the proper interfaces entirely from scratch,” says
Harris. The runtime environment allows you to control the
activities running across multiple computers from a central web
application
Theoretically, it can run on any operating system that has
Java present, so Linux and Mac OS X are in, with Windows to follow
at a later date. Additional languages like JavaScript and Python
are supported out of the box too.
So, Google provides the
palette, and the developer can let their
artistic side run free. The potential here is huge – it looks like
it would fit perfectly into an trendy gallery for an art
installation or could be used to produce physical educational
exhibitions for museums. Google clearly have this in mind, by
revealing plans to support the Processing language
used for similar scenarios.
Interactive Spaces is licensed under the Apache 2.0 licence
and the source
code for the project is available from
Google
Code. It’s an intriguing concept that is well
worth checking out. Keep an eye on this one as developers flock to
it showing off some artistic flair.