Intuitive interaction with multiple displays using orientation-sensor-enabled smartphones

Digital displays have been extensively used at various indoor and outdoor venues to provide updated information to the audiences. With the pervasiveness of the smartphones nowadays, it is possible to utilize smartphones to design new interactive display systems. Although many such systems have been proposed, none of them address the issue of supporting interaction with multiple displays. A new solution is proposed in this paper to allow users to use smartphone sensors to intuitively interact with multiple displays at one venue. This approach is based on azimuth angle measured by the smartphone´s orientation sensor, and situation abstraction which eliminates the use of location information. Each display at the venue is optimally assigned with an azimuth angle range. A smartphone constantly measures its azimuth angle. If it is within the azimuth angle ranges of a particular display, the smartphones presumes the user is interested to interact with this display. As a result, a user can interact with the desired display intuitively by pointing his/her smartphone at it, and switch smoothly from one display to another by changing smartphone´s orientation.