Learning Environment based on an Interactive Projection Table for Children

This paper proposes a tabletop learning environment for children. Some physics-based phenomena such as reflection and refraction of light are difficult for children to understand. Our interactive projection significantly help children understand behaviors of light through watching simulated light particles and interacting with them by moving real objects on the table. Our system consists a PC, video projector, and depth sensor. Depth-based object detection is performed with each of captured frames at 60 FPS. In the prototype of our implemented system for learning behaviors of light, simulated light particles reacts in realtime with actual objects moved by a user hand, which would greatly help people including children understand behaviors of light such as propagation and reflection. Our future work includes to conduct a series of user experiments in local museums to evaluate usability of the proposed system. Development of other learning applications are also of high importance.