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Announcing the release of Version 5.0 of the Pebbles software.
See the change log for the new features!
Go to the download page to get it.
The Pebbles project
is exploring how
handheld devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) including
devices running PalmOS or Pocket PCs,
and mobile phones, can be used when they are communicating with a "regular"
personal computer (PC), with other handhelds, and with computerized devices
such as telephones, radios, microwave ovens, automobiles, and factory
equipment.
Project
Summary
With the coming
wireless technologies, such as BlueTooth
and IEEE
802.11, connecting hand-held computers and conventional computers
together will no longer be an occasional event for synchronization.
Instead, the devices will frequently be in close, interactive
communication. Many environments, such as offices, meeting rooms and
classrooms, already contain computers, and the smart homes of the future
will have ubiquitous embedded computation. When the user enters one of
these environments carrying a hand-held or wearable computer, how will
that computer interact with the environment? The Pebbles project is
exploring the many ways that small handheld Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
such as 3Com Palm Pilots or Windows CE devices can serve as a useful
adjunct to the "fixed" computers in those situations. One set of
applications supports meetings where the participants are co-located. All
participants' PDAs are in continuous two-way communication with each
other, and with the main computer which is often projected on a screen to
serve as the focal point of the discussion. For classrooms, we are
investigating how the student's hand-helds can enhance testing and
notetaking when they are connected to the instructor's PC. Another set of
applications supports a single user using the PDA as an extra input and
output device. In the future, we will also explore the use of the PDA as a
customizable, intelligent front end to other applications and devices.
- Partially
funded by a grant from NSF.
2003-2006. "Using Handhelds to Help People with Motor Impairments."
This research is funded in part by the National Science Foundation under
Grant No. UA-0308065. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the
National Science Foundation.
- Partially
funded by a grant from NSF.
2001-2004. "Making it Easier to Interact with Technology Through
Handheld Personal Universal Controllers."
This research is funded in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.
IIS-0117658. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
those of the National Science Foundation. - Partially
funded by grants from MICROSOFT.
This research is also partially funded by five generous grants from
Microsoft (in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002), sponsored by Microsoft
Research, and by the Windows
CE development group.
- Partially funded by two grants from General Motors, as
part of the CMU General Motors
Collaborative Laboratory, for
Summer, 2002, and calendar year 2003.
- Partially funded by a grant
from NEC Foundation of America.
"Handhelds as Assistive Technologies for People with Muscular
Disabilities." 2003.
See the NEC Foundation page for this project.
Former Funding Grants:
- Partially funded by a grant from DARPA.
1998-2002. This research was performed in part in connection with
Contract number DAAD17-99-C-0061 with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the
authors and should not be interpreted as presenting the official
policies or position, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Army
Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government unless so designated by other
authorized documents. Citation of manufacturer's or trade names does not
constitute an official endorsement or approval of the use thereof. The
U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for
Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation hereon.
- Partially funded by a grant from the Pittsburgh
Digital Greenhouse.
2000-2002. This grant, in collaboration with Maya Design
focused on the "Personal Universal Controller".
Equipment Grants:
- Thanks for
a generous equipment grant from Symbol
Technologies of one PPT
2700 (ruggedized Palm-size PC running Windows CE with a laser
scanner and radio), two SPT
1750s (ruggedized Palm with laser scanner and radio), a Spectrum24
Wireless LAN AP 4111 Access Point, and a LA
3020 Wireless LAN PC Card.
- Thanks for a generous equipment grant from Hewlett Packard, under the
University
Grants Program
of 10 Jornada
430se, 120 Jornada
680 and about 100 Jornada 720.
- Thanks for a generous equipment grant from Lucent Technologies
of about 300 Wavelan wireless network PCMCIA cards for the HP Jornada
-
Thanks for a generous equipment grant from Palm
Computing, Inc. of 10
Palm IIIx Connected Organizers and 12
Palm Vx Handhelds and 4 m100
handhelds.
- Thanks for
a generous equipment grant from IBM of ten IBM
Workpads 8602-30X
- Thanks to
SMART Technologies, Inc. for the donation of a
SMART Board 580 and stand.
- Thanks to Synergy Solutions,
a division of BarPoint.com,
which donated 10 ten-foot Palm cables, that are normally distributed
free with a purchase of SlideShow
Commander.
- Thanks to TDK Systems
Europe, LTD for six BlueTooth modules for Palms and PCs: 4 Blue5
sleds for Palms, and 2 USB
Adaptors.
- Thanks to Mitsubishi
Electric Research Laboratory for donating a Mitsubishi WS-65909
65" Integrated HDTV Diamond Series television and Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U
High Definition Digital VCR that support the HAVi protocol. Also for
funding our purchase of the VividLogic HAVi SDK.
- Thanks to
Lutron, Inc. for the donation of a
Radio RA "dollhouse"
demonstration unit and the
RS232
interface for it.
- Thanks to IBM
Canada, Ltd. for one
IBM Thinkpad A31 laptop.
- Thanks to
Vivid
Logic for a discount price on their HAVi
SDK.
- Thanks to
Lantronix, Inc. for the donation of the
Premise Home Control Software
- Dealer Edition V2.0, and
Lantronix UDS-10-01 Port Device Server
We welcome funding
from other sources. Please contact Brad
Myers for
more information.
The first one
is the best current reference to use for Pebbles:
- Brad A. Myers. "Using Hand-Held Devices and PCs Together,"
Communications of the ACM. Volume 44, Issue 11. November, 2001. pp. 34 - 41.
Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
Talks and Videos:
- "Mobile Devices for Control", talk given as part of:
CS547: Stanford University Human-Computer Interaction Seminar on
People, Computers, and Design, November 22, 2002, Palo Alto, CA. Available as streaming video
(86min) (warning: streaming video link crashes Netscape 4.7!)
-
"Using Handheld Computers and PCs Together" (an overview of
the Pebbles project). 90 minute talk given to the HCI Seminar Series, Carnegie
Mellon University, 11-17-1999. Click
here to see a video of this talk
These are in forward chronological order
- Brad A.
Myers, Herb Stiel, and Robert Gargiulo. "Collaboration Using
Multiple PDAs Connected to a PC." Proceedings CSCW'98: ACM
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, November 14-18,
1998, Seattle, WA. pp. 285-294.
Postscript
(about 4.4 megabytes)
or Adobe
Acrobat (pdf) (about 400K)
- Brad A. Myers. An
Implementation Architecture to Support Single-Display Groupware.
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Technical
Report, no. CMU-CS-99-139 and Human Computer Interaction Institute
Technical Report CMU-HCII-99-101. May, 1999. Available in postscript
or pdf
formats.
- Robert C. Miller
and Brad A. Myers, "Synchronizing Clipboards of Multiple
Computers," CHI Letters: ACM Symposium on User Interface
Software and Technology, UIST'99, vol. 1, no. 1. November 7-10,
1999. Asheville, NC. pp. 65-66.
- Brad Myers, Kin
Pou Lie and Bo-Chieh ("Jerry") Yang, "Two-Handed Input
Using a PDA and a Mouse", Proceedings CHI'2000: Human Factors
in Computing Systems. April 1-6, 2000. The Hague, The Netherlands.
pp. 41-48. Postscript
or Acrobat
(pdf).
- Karen Cross and
Adrienne Warmack. "Contextual Inquiry: Quantification and Use in
Videotaped Analysis". (Student Poster) Adjunct Proceedings
CHI'2000: Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 1-6, 2000. The
Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 317-318. pdf
(Acrobat).
- Brad Myers,
"The Pebbles Project: Using PCs and Hand-held Computers Together;
Demonstration Extended Abstract." Adjunct Proceedings
CHI'2000: Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 1-6, 2000. The
Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 14-15.
- Franklin Chen, Brad Myers and David Yaron, Using Handheld
Devices for Tests in Classes.
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Technical
Report, no. CMU-CS-00-152 and Human Computer Interaction Institute
Technical Report CMU-HCII-00-101. July, 2000.
pdf
or
postscript
- Brad A. Myers, Robert C. Miller, Benjamin Bostwick, and
Carl Evankovich,
"Extending the Windows Desktop Interface With Connected Handheld Computers," 4th USENIX Windows Systems Symposium,
August 3-4, 2000, Seattle, WA. pp. 79-88.
postscript or
Adobe Acrobat (pdf).
-
Brad A. Myers. "Collaboration Using Multiple PDAs Connected to a PC,"
Workshop on Shared Environments to Support Face-to-Face Collaboration at
CSCW'2000, Philadelphia, PA.
html
- Brad A. Myers. "Using Multiple Devices Simultaneously for Display
and Control." IEEE Personal Communications
special issue on "Networking the Physical World." vol. 7, no. 5, Oct. 2000. pp. 62-65.
- Brad A. Myers, Jeff Nichols, Rob Miller.
"User Interfaces that Span Hand-Held and Fixed Devices"
Workshop on Distributed and Disappearing User Interfaces in
Ubiquitous Computing at CHI'2001, Seattle, WA.
Albrecht Schmidt, Peter Ljundgstrand, and Anind Dey, editors.
University of Karlsruhe Faculty of Information Technical Report
2001-6. ISSN 1432-7864.
html
- Jeffrey Nichols, Brad A. Myers, Rob Miller.
"Personal Interfaces in Ubiquitous Environments". Workshop
on Building the Ubiquitous Computing User Experience at CHI'2001,
Seattle, WA. html
- Choon Hong Peck, "Useful Parameters for the
Design of Laser Pointer Interaction Techniques." ACM
CHI'2001 Student Posters. Seattle, WA. March 31-April 5, 2001. pp. 461-462.
Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
- Jeffrey W. Nichols. "Using Handhelds as
Controls for Everyday Appliances: A Paper Prototype Study." ACM
CHI'2001 Student Posters. Seattle, WA. March 31-April 5, 2001. pp. 443-444. Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
- Brad A. Myers, Choon Hong Peck, Jeffrey Nichols, Dave Kong, and
Robert Miller, "Interacting At a Distance Using Semantic Snarfing," ACM UbiComp'2001, Sept 30 - Oct 2, 2001, Atlanta,
Georgia. pp. 305-314. Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
-
Brad A. Myers and Jeffrey Nichols, "Communication Ubiquity
Enables Ubiquitous Control." 'Boaster' for Human-Computer
Interaction Consortium (HCIC'2002). Winter Park, CO, Feb, 2002. html
-
Brad A. Myers, Rishi Bhatnagar, Jeffrey Nichols, Choon Hong Peck,
Dave Kong, Robert Miller, and A. Chris Long. "Interacting At a Distance: Measuring the Performance of Laser Pointers and Other
Devices." Proceedings CHI'2002: Human Factors in Computing Systems. Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 20-25, 2002.
pp. 33-40.
Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
-
Jeffrey Nichols. "Informing Automatic Generation of Remote Control
Interfaces with Human Designs" CHI'2002 Student Posters. Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 20-25, 2002.
pp. 864-865. Adobe
Acrobat (pdf)
-
Brad A. Myers, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Sunny Yang, Brian Yeung, Jeffrey Nichols, and
Robert Miller. "Using Handhelds to Help People with Motor Impairments," Fifth International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on
Assistive Technologies; ASSETS 2002. July 8-10, 2002. Edinburgh,
Scotland. pp. 89-96. Adobe
Acrobat (pdf) or html
- Brad A. Myers. "Mobile Devices for Control,"
The Fourth Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Mobile
Devices, Mobile HCI'02. (Keynote speech), September 18-20, 2002,
Pisa, Italy. pp. 1-8. pdf
-
Jeffrey Nichols, Brad Myers, Thomas K. Harris, Roni Rosenfeld,
Stefanie Shriver, Michael Higgins, Joseph Hughes. "Requirements for
Automatically Generating Multi-Modal Interfaces for Complex
Appliances,"
IEEE Fourth International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, ICMI'02. Pittsburgh, PA. October 14-16, 2002. pp. 377-382.
pdf
- Brad Myers, Robert Malkin, Michael Bett, Alex Waibel, Ben Bostwick, Robert C. Miller, Jie Yang, Matthias
Denecke, Edgar Seemann,
Jie Zhu, Choon Hong Peck, Dave Kong, Jeffrey Nichols, Bill Scherlis. "Flexi-modal and Multi-Machine User Interfaces,"
IEEE Fourth International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, ICMI'02, Pittsburgh, PA. October 14-16, 2002. pp. 343-348. pdf
- Jeffrey Nichols, Brad A. Myers, Michael Higgins, Joe
Hughes, Thomas K. Harris, Roni Rosenfeld, Mathilde Pignol. "Generating
Remote Control Interfaces for Complex Appliances." CHI Letters: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology, UIST'02, 27-30 Oct. 2002, Paris, France. pp. 161-170.
pdf
- Jacob O. Wobbrock, Jodi Forlizzi, Scott E. Hudson, Brad A. Myers,
"WebThumb: Interaction Techniques for Small-Screen Browsers,"
CHI Letters: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology, UIST'02, 27-30 Oct. 2002, Paris, France. pp. 205-208.
pdf
- Brad A. Myers, Jeffrey Nichols, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Kevin Litwack,
Michael Higgins, Joe Hughes, Thomas K. Harris, Roni Rosenfeld,
Mathilde Pignol. "Handheld Devices for Control".
Human-Computer Interaction Consortium
(HCIC'2003),
Winter Park, CO, Feb 5-9, 2003.
pdf
- Jeffrey Nichols, Brad A. Myers, Michael Higgins, Joseph Hughes,
Thomas K. Harris, Roni Rosenfeld, Kevin Litwack. "Personal Universal
Controllers: Controlling Complex Appliances With GUIs and Speech,"
Extended Abstract CHI'2003: Human Factors in Computing
Systems. (Demonstration Abstract). Fort Lauderdale, Florida, April
5-10, 2003. pp. 624-625. pdf
- Jacob O. Wobbrock. "The Benefits of Physical Edges in Gesture-Making:
Empirical Support for an Edge-Based Unistroke Alphabet." Extended Abstracts
of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '03). Ft.
Lauderdale, FL, April 2003. pp. 942-943.
pdf or
ACM
- Jeffrey Nichols and Brad A. Myers.
"Studying The Use of Handhelds to Control Smart Appliances".
International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing.
IWSAWC 2003.
In the Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE Conference
on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCS'03).
May 19-22, 2003, Providence, Rhode Island. pp. 274-279.
pdf
- Jacob O. Wobbrock, Brad A. Myers, and Scott E. Hudson. "Exploring
Edge-based Input Techniques for Handheld Text Entry".
International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing.
IWSAWC 2003.
In the Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE Conference
on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops
(ICDCS'03).
May 19-22, 2003, Providence, Rhode Island. pp. 280-282.
pdf
- Jacob O. Wobbrock, Brad A. Myers, and John Kembel. "EdgeWrite: A
High-Accuracy Stylus Text Entry Method,"
CHI Letters: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology, UIST'03, Nov. 2-5, 2003, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada. To appear. pdf
Submitted for Publication
- Brad A. Myers. "Handheld Devices for Control of PCs and
Appliances."
pdf
Unpublished
- Karen Cross,
Adrienne Warmack, and Brad Myers. "Lessons Learned: Using
Contextual Inquiry Analysis to Improve PDA Control of
Presentations". postscript
or pdf.
-
Brad A. Myers, Yu Shan A. Chuang, Marsha Tjandra, Mon-chu Chen, and Chun-Kwok Lee. "Floor Control in a Highly Collaborative Co-Located
Task." pdf
or Postscript.
Articles about the Pebbles project by others
(oldest to newest)
-
Paul Beebe, "Software Marketed to trade under CMU
brand name," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, vol. 112, no. 285,
Nov. 14, 2000.
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Jennie Borodko Stack, "Palm Pilot Connects Girl with
Classroom," QUEST, Volume 8, Number 1, February 2001.
html
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Catherine Zandonella, "How to Snarf with the
Geeks," New Scientist, London, October 6, 2001, p. 24.
-
John Zyskowski, "Handhands in a new world order," Federal
Computer Week, March 18, 2002.
html
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Mike Crissey, "Designers Work on All-in-One Remote,"
Associated Press, August 27, 2002.
html
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WPXI, Channel 11 news at 11:00pm on October 15, 2002. (Includes a
brief shot of Jeff and a PUC interface). mpg
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Michael Yeomans, "CMU Scientists Improving Computers' People
Skills," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Tuesday, October 22,
2002. pages B7, B10.
html
- Ann Light, "Pebbles Project connects PDAs up Smartly,"
UsabilityNews.com, 17 December 2002.
html
-
Walter McKenzie, "PDAs in the Classroom," Innovative Teaching Newsletter,
Vol. 5, no. 15, January 6, 2003, html
- Kimberly Patch, "Handhelds Gain Space," Technology Research
News, February 26/March 5, 2003, p. 4.
html
- Dan Gillmore, "Dan Gillmor: Designing new handhelds to improve
human-computer interaction," SiliconValley.Com; The San Jose
Mercury News, April 9, 2003.
html
We plan to continue
to work on Pebbles project. Let us know what would be useful.
If you have
ideas or requests, please email them to us at bam at cs.cmu.edu.
Please also
consider supporting the Pebbles project by providing a research grant.
This will help us continue this research. The companies that are
"affiliates" of the Pebbles projects will be given advance
notice of future directions, and will be asked for advice on future
directions. They will also have access to source code. We would also be interested in gifts of equipment, especially
additional PDAs or wireless technologies for connecting them.
Maintained by: Brad
A. Myers
Page design by:
Joonhwan Lee
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