10011 Report – Pervasive Public Displays

This Dagstuhl seminar has focused on bringing together researchers from a diverse set of fields of Computer Science to discuss the next generation of pervasive public display environments. The state-of-the-art in software control of display environments is best represented by commercial products that enable advance scheduling of content on a network of displays. Essentially such systems offer a traditional broadcast model based on linear playout of content and offer no support for user recognition or interaction with displays. Other display environments, e.g., in offices or conference centres, might simply run single, isolated applications, such as video conferencing or video players. In addition, current systems typically function as small isolated networks consisting of a limited number of displays under a single management domain (e.g. in a single shopping centre). In this respect, a parallel can be drawn with the state of computing prior to the invention of the Internet - machines were networked together in small clusters to facilitate resource sharing, control and communication but there were no mechanisms for interconnecting these networks.