TRANSFORM is an exploration of how shape display technology can be integrated into our everyday lives as interactive, shape changing furniture. These interfaces not only serve as traditional computing devices, but also support a variety of physical activities. By creating shapes on demand or by moving objects around, TRANSFORM changes the ergonomics, functionality and aesthetic dimensions of furniture. The video depicts a story with various scenarios of how TRANSFORM shape shifts to support a variety of use cases in the home and in the work environment: It holds and moves objects like fruits, game tokens, office supplies and tablets; creates dividers on demand; and generates interactive sculptures to convey messages and audio.
Shape changing interfaces give physical shapes to digital data so that users can feel and manipulate data with their hands and bodies. However, physical objects in our daily life not only have shape but also various material properties. In this project, we propose “Materiable,” an interaction technique to represent material properties using shape changing interfaces. Specifically, by integrating the multi-modal sensation techniques of haptics, our approach builds a perceptive model for the properties of deformable materials in response to direct manipulation without precise force feedback.
As a proof-of-concept prototype, we developed preliminary physics algorithms running on pin-based shape displays. The system can create computationally variable properties of deformable materials that are visually and physically perceivable. In our experiments, users identify three deformable material properties (flexibility, elasticity and viscosity) through direct touch interaction with the shape display and its dynamic movements.
Our research shows that shape changing interfaces can go beyond simply displaying shape allowing for rich embodied interaction and perceptions of rendered materials with the hands and body.
