Project Zanzibar Demonstration: A Portable and Flexible Tangible Interaction Platform

We demonstrate Project Zanzibar, a flexible mat that locates, uniquely identifies, and communicates with tangible objects placed on its surface, as well as senses a user's touch and hover gestures. Zanzibar integrates efficient and localised Near Field Communication (NFC) over a large surface area; object tracking combining NFC signal strength and capacitive footprint detection. In a series of applications, we showcase Zanzibar's capabilities of interacting with tangibles of varying complexity and interactive capabilities, sensing orientation on the mat, harvesting power, providing additional input and output, stack, or extend sensing outside the bounds of the mat.