Soft Interfaces

An actuating butterfly for tangible animation. (A) State when the voltage is OFF, (B) state when the voltage is ON

Soft electrohydraulic actuators are pouches of fluid that move when a voltage is applied. They are quiet, fast, thin, and cheap, which makes them useful for building interfaces that change shape rather than merely displaying pictures of things changing shape.

Working with colleagues across the ATLAS Institute, SEAM Lab has helped turn these actuators into a set of building blocks for shape-changing interfaces: books whose illustrations move on the page, origami-inspired surfaces that fold themselves, and a fingertip-worn device that renders high-resolution touch sensations for virtual objects.

This work is a collaboration with Daniel Leithinger, Mark Gross, Mirela Alistar, and Christoph Keplinger's group, published at CHI, SIGGRAPH, DIS, and IEEE World Haptics.

Associated Researchers

Publications

Purnendu, Jess Hartcher‑O’Brien, Vatsal Mehta, Nicholas Colonnese, Aakar Gupta, Carson Bruns, Priyanshu Agarwal. 2023. "".  In: Proceedings of IEEE World Haptics Conference (Delft, Netherlands, July 10–13, 2023).

Purnendu, Sasha Novack, Eric Acome, Mirela Alistar, Christoph Keplinger, Mark D. Gross, Carson Bruns, and Daniel Leithinger. 2021. “”. In: ACM SIGGRAPH 2021 Labs (SIGGRAPH '21). (August 6, 2021)

Purnendu,ĚýS Novack, E Acome, C Keplinger,ĚýM Alistar,ĚýMD Gross,ĚýC Bruns,ĚýD Leithinger. 2021.Ěý"". In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS ’21). (June 28-July 2,Ěý2021–Virtual Event).

Purnendu, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mark D. Gross, Carson Bruns, Daniel Leithinger. 2021. "". In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI '21 Extended Abstracts). (Yokohama, Japan–May 8-13, 2021).