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TaraScope: Controlling Remote Telescopes Through Tangible Interaction

Published: 15 January 2015 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we present TaraScope, a multimodal installation that enables student groups, participating in workshops at a Space Observatory in Ireland, to remotely manipulate and capture images from a robotic telescope situated in San Francisco, California. This project is developed as part of an international initiative between Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO), Ireland and Chabot Space & Science Center, California, with the aim of connecting the two locations while also stimulating interest in astronomy, science, technology, engineering and math. We describe the design rationale and implementation of the installation, which is based on creating an inviting, apprehendable, inexpensive and engaging system that supports inquiry-led learning and group interactions. Furthermore, we present several initial observations on the user experience of the system that we gathered through a series of evaluations that we conducted at the Observatory.

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Cited By

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  • (2020)Towards a Material Landscape of TUIs, Through the Lens of the TEI Proceedings 2008-2019Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3374920.3374944(95-110)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2020
  • (2015)Robots and cultural heritageProceedings of the Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts10.14236/ewic/eva2015.36(322-329)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2015

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  1. TaraScope: Controlling Remote Telescopes Through Tangible Interaction

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    TEI '15: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
    January 2015
    766 pages
    ISBN:9781450333054
    DOI:10.1145/2677199
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 15 January 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. astronomy
    2. installation
    3. museum
    4. tangible interface

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    TEI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 63 of 222 submissions, 28%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

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    • (2020)Towards a Material Landscape of TUIs, Through the Lens of the TEI Proceedings 2008-2019Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3374920.3374944(95-110)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2020
    • (2015)Robots and cultural heritageProceedings of the Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts10.14236/ewic/eva2015.36(322-329)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2015

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