CheckMate: Exploring a Tangible Augmented Reality Interface for Remote Interaction

Abstract: The digitalized world comes with increasing Internet capabilities, allowing to connect persons over distance easier than ever before. Video conferencing and similar online applications create great benefits bringing people who physically cannot spend as much time as they want virtually together. However, such remote experiences can also tend to lose the feeling of traditional experiences. People lack direct visual presence and no haptic feedback is available. In this paper, we tackle this problem by introducing our system called CheckMate. We combine Augmented Reality and capacitive 3D printed objects that can be sensed on an interactive surface to enable remote interaction while providing the same tangible experience as in co-located scenarios. As a proof-of-concept, we implemented a sample application based on the traditional chess game.