Group digital assistant: shared or combined PDA screen

Abstract

This paper proposes a new concept of a shared and combined screen for new small devices called GDA (group digital assistant). In the GDA, the screens of two PDAs can be shared at a sharing view mode, and can be treated just like one screen at a combination mode. The GDA can change the number of combined screens and direction of those screens flexibly, since the proposal method realizes using radio communications. We have developed application software and experimented in cooperative work for evaluation. We found that functions of the GDA were effective in actual cooperative work. The concept of the GDA can make flexible usage of a cellular phone and a PDA in the next generation.