Towards a tangible web: using physical objects to access and manipulate the Internet of Things

Abstract

Mankind has progressed to the point of manipulating objects at almost unlimited distances. Today this is possible because the communication abilities of the internet have been combined with the actuating and sensing functionality afforded by mechatronics. Recently, scientists and engineers have taken this remarkable achievement one step further by extending geographically independent remote manipulation to scenarios that have the potential to affect every living person, both now and in the future. This additional step has resulted in the phenomenon commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). In order to realise the full potential of the IoT, individuals need a mechanism to access and manipulate it. A potential mechanism for achieving this is the World Wide Web (web). This paper presents an alternative input mechanism for accessing the IoT via the web. The presented input mechanism consists of four components: low-cost two-dimensional input surface with tangible objects that represent the web data to be manipulated, image processing software, command interpretation software, and actuation software that serves as an interface between the input surface and a web browser