LiftTiles: Constructive Building Blocks for Prototyping Room-scale Shape-changing Interfaces

PubDate: Jan, 2020

Teams: University of Colorado Boulder

Writers: Ryo Suzuki, Ryosuke Nakayama, Dan Liu, Yasuaki Kakehi, Mark D. Gross, Daniel Leithinger

PDF: LiftTiles: Constructive Building Blocks for Prototyping Room-scale Shape-changing Interfaces

Project: LiftTiles: Constructive Building Blocks for Prototyping Room-scale Shape-changing Interfaces

Abstract

Large-scale shape-changing interfaces have great potential, but creating such systems requires substantial time, cost, space, and efforts, which hinders the research community to explore inter- actions beyond the scale of human hands. We introduce modular inflatable actuators as building blocks for prototyping room-scale shape-changing interfaces. Each actuator can change its height from 15cm to 150cm, actuated and controlled by air pressure. Each unit is low-cost (8 USD), lightweight (10 kg), compact (15 cm), and robust (e.g., can support 10 kg weight) making it well-suited for prototyping room-scale shape transformations. Moreover, our mod- ular and reconfigurable design allows researchers and designers to quickly construct different geometries and to explore various appli- cations. This paper contributes to the design and implementation of highly extendable inflatable actuators, and demonstrates a range of scenarios that can leverage this modular building block.