GestureTek technology wows visitors at Shanghai Expo Shipbuilder’s Pavilion

GestureTek's multi-touch, gesture control and ‘point to control’ technologies were the centerpieces of nearly a half-dozen glamorous interactive displays in the China Shipbuilding Corporation Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo. Two systems integrators in particular made remarkable use of gesture control technology in their exhibit design and custom content development. Electrosonic Inc. is an audio visual company based in Burbank, California that specializes in professional museum and themed-entertainment installations. Ralph Appelbaum is a New York-based design firm specializing in large-scale cultural attractions for museum, expositions, visitor centers and educational environments.

Installations leveraged various hands-on, touch-free and immersive experiences using both GestureTek's Illuminate interactive multi-touch interface, the AirTrack ‘point to control’ system for cursor control and the WallFX visual display system for projecting interactive effects and animation on vertical surfaces. A key consideration in choosing the technology was its ability to accommodate a high capacity of visitor traffic and heavy daily use.

One popular display called City Forum features a 40-meter long projected image of an actual ship, presenting interesting and entertaining interactive information about the shipbuilding experience. Ten projectors and 11 PC shuttles, with edge-to-edge overlap, create a large, seamlessly connected video canvas with five separate interactive stations. Cameras are used to sense the visitors' movements and interpret them as mouse commands. Users interact with the projection walls to activate the informational media embedded within them. In one example of interactive content, participants can select the ships structural components and drag them into place.

Another display called Diet Habit uses video projectors and 2 cameras affixed from above to display video/data programs about seafood onto a multi-touch wall (wall-painted screens). Multiple visitors interact with each of the displays using touch gestures, which are interpreted by cameras and translated into mouse control. This large-format multi-touch wall enables multiple users to simultaneously access menu-based multi-media content by either touching or pointing immediately in front of the screen. Flash applications developed by Crystal feature multiple layers of large projected ‘buttons’, which users can select based on their preferences. The sheer size of the screen and its interactive imagery added greatly to the impact of the display on visitors.

In another innovative use of GestureTek's technology, a WallFX interactive display system was built right into a salt-water aquarium. A camera and infrared pointed at the fish tank captures the movement of the fish, triggering spectacular changes to dynamic graphic content which is displayed on projection film adhered to the tank. Projected ‘bubbles’ of information follow the fish as they move.

"The Shanghai Shipbuilders exhibit was very successful and we were pleased with the end result of the installation," said Andrew Johnson, Systems Designer for Electrosonic. "The displays provided a terrific ‘hands-on’ experience for visitors that made them feel part of the exhibit and made their visit more memorable. The systems were fabricated to handle high crowd volumes and heavy daily use, and visitors were not disappointed."