LineFORM: Actuated Curve Interfaces for Display, Interaction, and Constraint

In this paper we explore the design space of actuated curve interfaces, a novel class of shape changing-interfaces. Physical curves have several interesting characteristics from the perspective of interaction design: they have a variety of inherent affordances; they can easily represent abstract dat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nakagaki, Ken, Follmer, Sean Weston, Ishii, Hiroshi
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Association for Computing Machinery 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110340
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3378-7845
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4918-8908
Description
Summary:In this paper we explore the design space of actuated curve interfaces, a novel class of shape changing-interfaces. Physical curves have several interesting characteristics from the perspective of interaction design: they have a variety of inherent affordances; they can easily represent abstract data; and they can act as constraints, boundaries, or borderlines. By utilizing such aspects of lines and curves, together with the added capability of shape-change, new possibilities for display, interaction and body constraint are possible. In order to investigate these possibilities we have implemented two actuated curve interfaces at different scales. LineFORM, our implementation, inspired by serpentine robotics, is comprised of a series chain of 1DOF servo motors with integrated sensors for direct manipulation. To motivate this work we present various applications such as shape changing cords, mobiles, body constraints, and data manipulation tools.