Dining Presenter: Augmented Reality
system for a dining tabletop
Maki Mori

Abstract

Ochanomizu University

In this paper, we propose an Augmented Reality
system called DiningPresenter that enhances the visualappearance of food, dishes, and a tabletop in a diningroom. DiningPresenter detects the position of dishes
and the amount of food to overlay a variety ofinformation using a camera and a projector attachedover a dining table. We believe that DiningPresenter
helps in communication and education in a dining roomand that it makes dining environments more attractive.

2-2-1Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo, Japanmorimaki@is.ocha.ac.jp
Kazutaka Kurihara
AIST
1-18-13 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, Japan
qurihara@unryu.org
Koji Tsukada
Ochanomizu Universitytsuka@acm.org
Itiro Siio
Ochanomizu University
siio@acm.org

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
UbiComp 2009, Sep 30 – Oct 3, 2009, Orlando, FL, USA
ACM XXX-X-XXXXX-XXX-X/XX/XX.

Keywords
Augmented Reality, dining room, dish, dietaryeducation

ACM Classification Keywords
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,HCI): Miscellaneous.

Introduction
People find food to be delicious because of its taste,flavor, texture, and appearance. The visual appearanceof food is of great importance since approximately 80%of the human perception is related to the visual sense.
We propose an augmented reality (AR) system called
DiningPresenter that can enhance the appearance offood, dishes, and a tabletop in a dining room. Althoughmany research projects are using AR technology, mostare focusing on tabletop applications in officeenvironments. Lin[1] proposed an AR application for
disciplining young children at a dining table[1].
DiningPresenter aims to make dining environments
more attractive.

shows an example of an artistic decoration used forspecial dinners. The system projects images such as
attractive place mats around the dish and a heart iconon the steak.

DiningPresenter
DiningPresenter mainly consists of two components(shown in fig. 1): (a) authoring tools and (b)presentation tools. First, we describe the authoring
tools. We attached a camera over a kitchen counterand installed a tablet PC in a kitchen drawer. When auser takes a picture of a dish using the camera, thepicture is automatically imported into the drawing
software running on the tablet PC. Using this software,
the user can draw illustrations and messages
on/around the dishes using pen tools and pre-preparedartwork (fig. 1a). Next, we describe the presentation
tools. We attached a projector and a camera over adining table (fig. 1b). We used the camera for image
processing to detect dishes and the amount of foodremaining on them. When a user places a dish on thetable, the system identifies the dish by its edge color
and projects the corresponding content on/around thedish. As the amount of food decreases, the systemautomatically changes the contents. When the user
removes the dish and places the next one, the systemprojects new contents. We introduce some examples ofcontents projected using DiningPresenter. Figures 2aand 2b show contents used for dietary education.
Figure 2a shows information about the ingredients offood, such as the original shapes before harvesting andthe growing district. Figure 2b shows an illustration anda message for motivating children to eat food theymight dislike (e.g., carrots or peppers). Figure 2cfigure 1. Components of DiningPresenter: (a) authoring tools
in a kitchen and (b) presentation tools in a dining room.

(a)

(b)

(a)

(b)

(c)

figure2.
Examples of contents projected using
DiningPresenter: (a) and (b) show examples used for
dietary education and (c) shows an example of artistic
decoration.

References[1] Lin, T.-Y., et. al., A persuasive game to encourage
healthy dietary behaviors of young children. Adjunctproceedings of Ubicomp2006, 2006.