The four projects presented by ATLAS at DIS'22

ATLAS research front and center at DIS’22

June 29, 2022

Researchers from ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design, THING, Living Matter and Superhuman Computing labs presented four papers, including three that received “Honorable Mention” awards, at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

An arm with illustrations added of different emotions, symbolizing the emotional effect of touch.

DIS'22: Exploring how designers approach emotional robotic touch

June 22, 2022

Prior psychology findings show humans can communicate distinct emotions solely through touch. In this award-winning work presented at DIS'22, THING Lab researchers hypothesize that similar effects might also be apply to robotic touch.

An origami butterfly

Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation

Jan. 31, 2022

SIGGRAPH sat down with Purnendu, a PhD student in the ATLAS Institute and a researcher at Meta Reality Labs, to talk about his team’s SIGGRAPH 2021 Labs project, “Electriflow: Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation Using Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators.” The team's actuator technology strives to augment animation within physical books.

Animated view of a castle with trees around it, as well as showing where variables are chosen in the VR world of Popo.

POPO lets novices program from inside their VR surroundings

Nov. 9, 2021

Julia Uhr, an ATLAS PhD student and researcher in the ACME Lab, has created a fun 3D visual programming language that empowers novice coders to create customized VR environments while inside those environments.

hapticbots

HapticBots give form to virtual surfaces

Oct. 14, 2021

In virtual reality, when you reach out and try to touch a visible surface, it normally isn't there. Using a swarm of Rubik's Cube-sized, shape-changing robots, the illusion becomes physical.

Front cover

RoomShift research: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications magazine's cover story

Aug. 10, 2021

THING Lab researchers, led by recent PhD graduate, Ryo Suzuki, developed a swarm of shape-changing robots that move furniture around a room, opening up new haptic ideas for virtual reality.

a paper butterfly that is lifting off the page

Origami comes to life with new shape-changing materials

July 22, 2021

Imagine opening up a book of nature photos only to see a kaleidoscope of graceful butterflies flutter out from the page. Such fanciful storybooks might soon be possible thanks to the work of a team of designers and engineers at CU Boulder’s ATLAS Institute.

Chi logo of waves

ATLAS @ CHI 2021

May 14, 2021

ATLAS researchers have 10 published works and one special interest group associated with the CHI 2021 conference, the world’s preeminent conference for the field of human-computer interaction. Held virtually, CHI 2021, also known as ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, took place May 8-13.

drone with expandable protective cage that deploys based on proximity to solid objects

Pufferfish-inspired robot could improve drone safety

Oct. 20, 2020

Pufferbot is an aerial robot with an expandable protective structure that deploys to encircle the drone and prevent the drone's rotors from coming in contact with obstacles or people.

Person with VR goggles touches a table that has a Roomba with a mechanical scissor lift below.

RoomShift: A room-scale haptic and dynamic environment for VR applications

Sept. 30, 2020

RoomShift is a haptic and dynamic environment that could be used to support a variety of virtual reality (VR) experiences.

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