skip to main content
research-article

ObjectSkin: Augmenting Everyday Objects with Hydroprinted Touch Sensors and Displays

Published: 08 January 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Augmenting everyday objects with interactive input and output surfaces is a long-standing topic in ubiquitous computing and HCI research. Existing approaches, however, fail to leverage the objects' full potential, particularly in highly curved organic geometries and in diverse visuo-haptic surface properties. We contribute ObjectSkin, a fabrication technique for adding conformal interactive surfaces to rigid and flexible everyday objects. It enables multi-touch sensing and display output that seamlessly integrates with highly curved and irregular geometries. The approach is based on a novel water-transfer process for interactive surfaces. It leverages off-the-shelf hobbyist equipment to fabricate thin, conformal, and translucent electronic circuits that preserve the surface characteristics of everyday objects. It offers two methods, for rapid low-fidelity and versatile high-fidelity prototyping, and is applicable to a wide variety of materials. Results from a series of technical experiments provide insights into the supported object geometries, compatible object materials, and robustness. Seven example cases demonstrate how ObjectSkin makes it possible to leverage geometries, surface properties, and unconventional objects for prototyping novel interactions for ubiquitous computing.

Supplementary Material

groeger (groeger.zip)
Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, ObjectSkin: Augmenting Everyday Objects with Hydroprinted Touch Sensors and Displays

References

[1]
Jacob J. Adams, Eric B. Duoss, Thomas F. Malkowski, Michael J. Motala, Bok Yeop Ahn, Ralph G. Nuzzo, Jennifer T. Bernhard, and Jennifer A. Lewis. 2011. Conformal Printing of Electrically Small Antennas on Three-Dimensional Surfaces. Advanced Materials 23, 11 (2011), 1335--1340. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201003734
[2]
Eric Akaoka, Tim Ginn, and Roel Vertegaal. 2010. DisplayObjects: Prototyping Functional Physical Interfaces on 3D Styrofoam, Paper or Cardboard Models. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ‘10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 49--56. https://doi.org/10.1145/1709886.1709897
[3]
Paul Badger. 2015. Capacitive Sensing Library. (2015). Retrieved September 20, 2015 from http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/CapacitiveSensor.
[4]
Jesse Burstyn, Nicholas Fellion, Paul Strohmeier, and Roel Vertegaal. 2015. PrintPut: Resistive and Capacitive Input Widgets for Interactive 3D Prints. In Human-Computer Interaction âĂŞ INTERACT 2015, Julio Abascal, Simone Barbosa, Mirko Fetter, Tom Gross, Philippe Palanque, and Marco Winckler (Eds.). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 9296. Springer International Publishing, 332--339. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22701-6_25
[5]
Varun Perumal C and Daniel Wigdor. 2015. Printem: Instant Printed Circuit Boards with Standard Office Printers 8 Inks. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 243--251. https://doi.org/10.1145/2807442.2807511
[6]
D. Cebon and M.F. Ashby. 2006. Engineering Materials Informatics. MRS Bulletin 31, 12 (2006), 1004âĂŞ1012. https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs2006.229
[7]
Artem Dementyev and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. WristFlex: Low-power Gesture Input with Wrist-worn Pressure Sensors. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 161--166. https://doi.org/10.1145/2642918.2647396
[8]
Paul Dietz and Darren Leigh. 2001. DiamondTouch: A Multi-user Touch Technology. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘01). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 219--226. https://doi.org/10.1145/502348.502389
[9]
Nan-Wei Gong, Jürgen Steimle, Simon Olberding, Steve Hodges, Nicholas Edward Gillian, Yoshihiro Kawahara, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. PrintSense: A Versatile Sensing Technique to Support Multimodal Flexible Surface Interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1407--1410. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557173
[10]
Chris Harrison, Hrvoje Benko, and Andrew D. Wilson. 2011. OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 441--450. https://doi.org/10.1145/2047196.2047255
[11]
David Holman, Roel Vertegaal, Mark Altosaar, Nikolaus Troje, and Derek Johns. 2005. Paper Windows: Interaction Techniques for Digital Paper. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 591--599. https://doi.org/10.1145/1054972.1055054
[12]
Konami Izumi, Yasunori Yoshida, and Shizuo Tokito. 2016. Soft Blanket Gravure (SBG) Printing Technology for Fine Electronic Interconnect Layers for Three-Dimensional Curved Surfaces. Convertech 8 e-print 6, 1 (jan 2016), 70--74. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40020715041/en/
[13]
Hsin-Liu (Cindy) Kao, Christian Holz, Asta Roseway, Andres Calvo, and Chris Schmandt. 2016. DuoSkin: Rapidly Prototyping On-skin User Interfaces Using Skin-friendly Materials. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16--23. https://doi.org/10.1145/2971763.2971777
[14]
Kunihiro Kato and Homei Miyashita. 2014. Extension Sticker: A Method for Transferring External Touch Input Using a Striped Pattern Sticker. In Proceedings of the Adjunct Publication of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST‘14 Adjunct). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 59--60. https://doi.org/10.1145/2658779.2668032
[15]
Yoshihiro Kawahara, Steve Hodges, Benjamin S. Cook, Cheng Zhang, and Gregory D. Abowd. 2013. Instant Inkjet Circuits: Lab-based Inkjet Printing to Support Rapid Prototyping of UbiComp Devices. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ‘13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 363--372. https://doi.org/10.1145/2493432.2493486
[16]
Yukihiko Kawaharada, Akihiro Sawaguchi, Mitsutaka Nanbo, Hiroyuki Tabe, Shinji Kato, and Shuzo Mizuno. 2005. Hydraulic transfer method. (07 June 2005).
[17]
Dae-Hyeong Kim, Nanshu Lu, Rui Ma, Yun-Soung Kim, Rak-Hwan Kim, Shuodao Wang, Jian Wu, Sang Min Won, Hu Tao, Ahmad Islam, Ki Jun Yu, Tae-il Kim, Raeed Chowdhury, Ming Ying, Lizhi Xu, Ming Li, Hyun-Joong Chung, Hohyun Keum, Martin McCormick, Ping Liu, Yong-Wei Zhang, Fiorenzo G. Omenetto, Yonggang Huang, Todd Coleman, and John A. Rogers. 2011. Epidermal Electronics. Science 333, 6044 (2011), 838--843. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1206157 arXiv:http://science.sciencemag.org/content/333/6044/838.full.pdf
[18]
Johnny C. Lee, Daniel Avrahami, Scott E. Hudson, Jodi Forlizzi, Paul H. Dietz, and Darren Leigh. [n. d.]. The Calder Toolkit: Wired and Wireless Components for Rapidly Prototyping Interactive Devices. In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (2004) (DIS ‘04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 167--175. https://doi.org/10.1145/1013115.1013139
[19]
Joanne Lo, Doris Jung Lin Lee, Nathan Wong, David Bui, and Eric Paulos. 2016. Skintillates: Designing and Creating Epidermal Interactions. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 853--864. https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901885
[20]
Simon Olberding, Sergio Soto Ortega, Klaus Hildebrandt, and Jürgen Steimle. 2015. Foldio: Digital Fabrication of Interactive and Shape-Changing Objects With Foldable Printed Electronics. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 223--232. https://doi.org/10.1145/2807442.2807494
[21]
Simon Olberding, Michael Wessely, and Jürgen Steimle. 2014. PrintScreen: Fabricating Highly Customizable Thin-film Touch-displays. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 281--290. https://doi.org/10.1145/2642918.2647413
[22]
Makoto Ono, Buntarou Shizuki, and Jiro Tanaka. 2013. Touch 8 Activate: Adding Interactivity to Existing Objects Using Active Acoustic Sensing. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 31--40. https://doi.org/10.1145/2501988.2501989
[23]
Jacqueline Rausch, Larisa Salun, Stefan Griesheimer, Mesut Ibis, and Roland Werthschützky. 2011. Printed piezoresistive strain sensors for monitoring of light-weight structures. In SENSOR 8 TEST Conference. http://tubiblio.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/53881/
[24]
Gabriel Saada, Michael Layani, Avi Chernevousky, and Shlomo Magdassi. 2017. Hydroprinting Conductive Patterns onto 3D Structures. Advanced Materials Technologies 2, 5 (2017), 1600289--n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.201600289 1600289.
[25]
Neralagatta M. Sangeetha, Nicolas Decorde, Benoit Viallet, Guillaume Viau, and Laurence Ressier. 2013. Nanoparticle-Based Strain Gauges Fabricated by Convective Self Assembly: Strain Sensitivity and Hysteresis with Respect to Nanoparticle Sizes. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 117, 4 (2013), 1935--1940. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp310077r arXiv:http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp310077r
[26]
Munehiko Sato, Ivan Poupyrev, and Chris Harrison. 2012. Touché: Enhancing Touch Interaction on Humans, Screens, Liquids, and Everyday Objects. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 483--492. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2207743
[27]
Valkyrie Savage, Xiaohan Zhang, and Björn Hartmann. 2012. Midas: Fabricating Custom Capacitive Touch Sensors to Prototype Interactive Objects. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 579--588. https://doi.org/10.1145/2380116.2380189
[28]
Martin Schmitz, Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi, Matthias Balwierz, Roman Lissermann, Max Mühlhäuser, and Jürgen Steimle. 2015. Capricate: A Fabrication Pipeline to Design and 3D Print Capacitive Touch Sensors for Interactive Objects. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 253--258. https://doi.org/10.1145/2807442.2807503
[29]
C. Srichan, T. Saikrajang, T. Lomas, A. Jomphoak, T. Maturos, D. Phokaratkul, T. Kerdcharoen, and A. Tuantranont. 2009. Inkjet printing PEDOT:PSS using desktop inkjet printer. In 2009 6th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Vol. 01. 465--468. https://doi.org/10.1109/ECTICON.2009.5137049
[30]
Jürgen Steimle, Andreas Jordt, and Pattie Maes. 2013. Flexpad: Highly Flexible Bending Interactions for Projected Handheld Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 237--246. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470688
[31]
Martin Weigel, Tong Lu, Gilles Bailly, Antti Oulasvirta, Carmel Majidi, and Jürgen Steimle. 2015. iSkin: Flexible, Stretchable and Visually Customizable On-Body Touch Sensors for Mobile Computing. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2991--3000. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702391
[32]
Martin Weigel, Aditya Shekhar Nittala, Alex Olwal, and Jürgen Steimle. 2017. SkinMarks: Enabling Interactions on Body Landmarks Using Conformal Skin Electronics. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, to appear.
[33]
Mark Weiser. 1999. The Computer for the 21st Century. SIGMOBILE Mob. Comput. Commun. Rev. 3, 3 (July 1999), 3--11. https://doi.org/10.1145/329124.329126
[34]
Michael Wessely, Theophanis Tsandilas, and Wendy E. Mackay. 2016. Stretchis: Fabricating Highly Stretchable User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 697--704. https://doi.org/10.1145/2984511.2984521
[35]
Karl Willis, Eric Brockmeyer, Scott Hudson, and Ivan Poupyrev. 2012. Printed Optics: 3D Printing of Embedded Optical Elements for Interactive Devices. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 589--598. https://doi.org/10.1145/2380116.2380190
[36]
Andrew D. Wilson. 2005. PlayAnywhere: A Compact Interactive Tabletop Projection-vision System. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 83--92. https://doi.org/10.1145/1095034.1095047
[37]
Yasunori Yoshida, Konami Izumi, and Shizuo Tokito. 2016. Development of Omnidirectional Inkjet (OIJ) Printing Technology Using a Vertically Articulated Robot. Convertech 8 e-print 6, 1 (jan 2016), 75--79. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40020715046/en/
[38]
Yang Zhang and Chris Harrison. 2015. Tomo: Wearable, Low-Cost Electrical Impedance Tomography for Hand Gesture Recognition. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software 8 Technology (UIST ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 167--173. https://doi.org/10.1145/2807442.2807480
[39]
Yang Zhang, Gierad Laput, and Chris Harrison. 2017. Electrick: Low-Cost Touch Sensing Using Electric Field Tomography. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, to appear.
[40]
Yizhong Zhang, Chunji Yin, Changxi Zheng, and Kun Zhou. 2015. Computational Hydrographic Printing. 34, 4, Article 131 (July 2015), 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2766932

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Ambient Display Utilizing Anisotropy of TatamiProceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3689050.3704924(1-15)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2025
  • (2024)Characteristics of Conductive Paints and Tapes for Interactive MuralsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36785878:3(1-34)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Capacitive Touch Sensing on General 3D SurfacesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/365818543:4(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. ObjectSkin: Augmenting Everyday Objects with Hydroprinted Touch Sensors and Displays

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
    Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies  Volume 1, Issue 4
    December 2017
    1298 pages
    EISSN:2474-9567
    DOI:10.1145/3178157
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    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].

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 08 January 2018
    Accepted: 01 October 2017
    Received: 01 August 2017
    Published in IMWUT Volume 1, Issue 4

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. Fabrication
    2. displays
    3. interactive objects
    4. printed electronics
    5. prototyping
    6. sensors
    7. touch input

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed

    Funding Sources

    • Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction within the German Federal Excellence Initiative

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)154
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)10
    Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2025)Ambient Display Utilizing Anisotropy of TatamiProceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3689050.3704924(1-15)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2025
    • (2024)Characteristics of Conductive Paints and Tapes for Interactive MuralsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36785878:3(1-34)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Capacitive Touch Sensing on General 3D SurfacesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/365818543:4(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2024
    • (2024)MouthIO: Fabricating Customizable Oral User Interfaces with Integrated Sensing and ActuationProceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3654777.3676443(1-16)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
    • (2024)E-Joint: Fabrication of Large-Scale Interactive Objects Assembled by 3D Printed Conductive Parts with Copper Plated JointsProceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3654777.3676398(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
    • (2024)A Touch of Gold - Spraying and Electroplating 3D Prints to Create Biocompatible On-Skin WearablesAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680227(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
    • (2024)HydroSkin: Rapid Prototyping On-Skin Interfaces via Low-Cost Hydrographic PrintingExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651052(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Rapid Fabrication of Haptic and Electric Input Interfaces using 4D Printed OrigamiExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651022(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)SolderlessPCB: Reusing Electronic Components in PCB Prototyping through Detachable 3D Printed HousingsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642765(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)DisplayFab: The State of the Art and a Roadmap in the Personal Fabrication of Free-Form Displays Using Active Materials and Additive Manufacturing.Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642708(1-24)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    Full Access

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media