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Kinetic Blocks: Actuated Constructive Assembly for Interaction and Display

Published: 05 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Pin-based shape displays not only give physical form to digital information, they have the inherent ability to accurately move and manipulate objects placed on top of them. In this paper we focus on such object manipulation: we present ideas and techniques that use the underlying shape change to give kinetic ability to otherwise inanimate objects. First, we describe the shape display's ability to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble structures from simple passive building blocks through stacking, scaffolding, and catapulting. A technical evaluation demonstrates the reliability of the presented techniques. Second, we introduce special kinematic blocks that are actuated and sensed through the underlying pins. These blocks translate vertical pin movements into other degrees of freedom like rotation or horizontal movement. This interplay of the shape display with objects on its surface allows us to render otherwise inaccessible forms, like overhangs, and enables richer input and output.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      UIST '15: Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology
      November 2015
      686 pages
      ISBN:9781450337793
      DOI:10.1145/2807442
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Published: 05 November 2015

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      Author Tags

      1. actuated tangible interfaces
      2. shape displays
      3. shape-changing user interfaces

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      Cited By

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      • (2024)Intermolecular Forces in a Physical Molecular Visualization System: A Human-Computer Interaction ApplicationEuropean Journal of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology10.59324/ejaset.2024.2(2).142:2(212-223)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2024
      • (2024)Intermolecular Forces in a Physical Molecular Visualization System: A Human-Computer Interaction ApplicationSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4840189Online publication date: 2024
      • (2024)Popping-Up Poster: A Pin-Based Promotional Poster Device for Engaging Customers through Physical Shape TransformationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36981388:ISS(283-300)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
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      • (2024)“Push-That-There”: Tabletop Multi-robot Object Manipulation via Multimodal 'Object-level Instruction'Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661542(2497-2513)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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      • (2024)Soft Growing Pin for High-Extension Shape-Changing Displays2024 IEEE 7th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)10.1109/RoboSoft60065.2024.10522001(650-656)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
      • (2023)VoxelHap: A Toolkit for Constructing Proxies Providing Tactile and Kinesthetic Haptic Feedback in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586183.3606722(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
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