Daniel Leithinger

  • Visiting Assistant Professor
  • THING Lab
  • SHAPE CHANGING & HAPTIC INTERFACES
  • COMPUTER SCIENCE

Daniel Leithinger, assistant professor (ATLAS Institute & Computer Science) creates shape-changing human computer interfaces that push digital information past the boundaries of flat displays, and into the real world. Motivated by the belief that computers must embrace the dexterity and expressiveness of the human body, his interfaces allow users to touch, grasp and deform data physically. Daniel received his PhD at the MIT Media Lab in 2015. His academic publications have been published at ACM UIST, TEI and CHI conferences, and he has received design awards from Fast Company, Red Dot and IDEA. Projects like "inFORM" have been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Ars Electronica Museum, and the Milan Design Week.

For more information about Daniel Leithinger's past work with the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media lab, visit his MIT Media Lab page.

Projects

Publications

C. L. Hunt, K. Sun, Z. Dhuliawala, F. Tsukiyama, I. Matkovic, Z. Schwemier, A. Wolf, Z. Zhang, A. Druin, A. Huynh, D. Leithinger, J. Yip. 2023. “Designing together, miles apart: A longitudinal tabletop telepresence adventure in online co-design with children”. In: ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC '23) (Chicago, IL, June 19-23, 2023).

Ran ZhouZachary Schwemler, Akshay Baweja, Harpreet Sareen, Casey Lee Hunt, and Daniel Leithinger. 2023. "TactorBots: A Haptic Design Toolkit for Out-of-lab Exploration of Emotional Robotic Touch". In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).

Cathy Mengying Fang, Ryo Suzuki, and Daniel Leithinger. 2023. "VR Haptics at Home: Repurposing Everyday Objects and Environment for Casual and On-Demand VR Haptic Experiences". In: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).

Ran ZhouZachary Schwemler, Akshay Baweja, Harpreet Sareen, Casey Lee Hunt, and Daniel Leithinger. 2023. "Demonstrating TactorBots: A Haptic Design Toolkit for Exploration of Emotional Robotic Touch". In: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023). 

Suibi Che–Chuan WengTorin HopkinsRishi VanukuruChad TobinAmy Banic, ​​Daniel Leithinger, and Ellen Yi–Luen Do. 2023. “How Field of View Affects Awareness of an Avatar During a Musical Task in Augmented Reality”. In: 2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (Shanghai, China, March 25-29, 2023). 

Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, and Daniel Leithinger. 2022. EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1330–1344. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533487 .pdf  

(June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Pictorial Honorable Mention].

Hooman HedayatiRyo SuzukiWyatt ReesDaniel Leithinger, and Daniel Szafir. 2022. Designing Expandable-Structure Robots for Human-Robot Interaction. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. vol. 9. DOI=10.3389/frobt.2022.719639  (April 11, 2022).

Ryo Suzuki, Eyal Ofek, Mike Sinclair, Daniel Leithinger, and Mar Gonzalez-Franco. 2021. Demonstrating HapticBots: Distributed Encountered-type Haptics for VR with Multiple Shape-changing Mobile Robots. In The Adjunct Publication of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 131–133. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3474349.3480202 (Virtual–Oct.10-14, 2021).

PurnenduSasha M Novack, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mirela AlistarMark D GrossCarson Bruns, and Daniel Leithinger. 2021. Electriflow: Soft Electrohydraulic Building Blocks for Prototyping Shape-changing Interfaces. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1280–1290. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462093 (June 28-July 2, 2021Virtual Event).

Purnendu, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mark D. GrossCarson BrunsDaniel Leithinger. 2021. Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators for Origami Inspired Shape-Changing Interfaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI '21 Extended Abstracts). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451590. (Yokohama, Japan–May 8-13, 2021).

Hooman HedayatiRyo SuzukiDaniel LeithingerDaniel J. Szafir. 2020. PufferBot: Actuated Expandable Structures for Aerial Robots. In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2020). DOI: 10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341088. (Las Vegas, Nevada–Oct. 25-29, 2020) pdf.

Ryo Suzuki, Rubaiat Habib Kazi, Li-Yi Wei, Stephen DiVerdi, Wilmot Li, and Daniel Leithinger. 2020. RealitySketch: Embedding Responsive Graphics and Visualizations in AR through Dynamic Sketching. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3379337.3415892 (Minneapolis, Minnesota–Oct. 20-23, 2020) [Honorable Mention Paper Award].

Ryo SuzukiHooman HedayatiClement Zheng, James Bohn, Daniel SzafirEllen Yi-Luen DoMark D Gross, and Daniel Leithinger. 2020. RoomShift: Room-scale Dynamic Haptics for VR with Furniture-moving Swarm Robots. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper 396, 11 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376523  (Honolulu, Hawaii – April 25-30, 2020).

Ryo Suzuki, Ryosuke Nakayama, Dan Liu, Yasuaki Kakehi, Mark D. Gross, and Daniel Leithinger. 2020. LiftTiles: Constructive Building Blocks for Prototyping Room-scale Shape-changing Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Pages 143–151. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3374941 (Sydney, Australia–Feb. 9-12, 2020). 

Ryo Suzuki, Ryosuke Nakayama, Dan Liu, Yasuaki Kakehi, Mark D. Gross, and Daniel Leithinger. 2019. LiftTiles: Modular and Reconfigurable Room-scale Shape Displays through Retractable Inflatable Actuators. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3332167.3357105  (New Orleans, Louisiana – Oct. 20-23, 2019).

Ryo SuzukiClement Zheng, Yasuaki Kakehi, Tom YehEllen Yi-Luen DoMark D. GrossDaniel Leithinger. 2019. ShapeBots: Shape-changing Swarm Robots. In Proceedings of The 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'19). https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347911 (New Orleans, LA—Oct. 20-23, 2019).

Peter GyoryClement ZhengDaniel Leithinger, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. HOT SWAP: Probing Embodied Game Interfaces With Reconfigurable Controllers. In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion (DIS '19 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 183-187. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3323901. (San Diego, CA, USA—June 23-28, 2019).

Clement ZhengJeeeun KimDaniel Leithinger, Mark D Gross, & Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2019. Mechamagnets: Designing and Fabricating Haptic and Functional Physical Inputs with Embedded Magnets. In Proceedings of Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI’19), p. 325-334 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3295622.

Ryo Suzuki, Junichi Yamaoka, Daniel LeithingerTom YehMark D. Gross, Yoshihiro Kawahara, Yasuaki Kakehi. 2018. Dynablock: Dynamic 3D Printing for Instant and Reconstructable Shape Formation. In Proceedings of The 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'18). DOI: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3242659 (Berlin, Germany—Oct. 14-17, 2018).

Udayan Umapathi, Patrick Shin, Ken Nakagaki, Daniel Leithinger, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2018. Programmable Droplets for Interaction. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3186607 (Montreal QC, Canada—April 21-26, 2018).

Additional Publications