LiftTiles

Shape display is a promising approach to general-purpose shape-changing interfaces. Most of the existing pin-based shape displays focus on interactions at the scale of a human hand because of the following three technical challenges when trying to create a larger-size shape display: 1) scalability: common electromechanical linear actuators are difficult to scale to larger sizes due to cost and fabrication complexity. 2) robustness: in a room-scale shape display, each actuator must support heavy objects like a human body, thus it must be robust compared to smaller actuators. 3) deployability: existing shape-changing systems. LiftTiles, a modular and reconfigurable room-scale shape display, consists of an array of retractable and inflatable actuator that is compact (e.g., 15cm tall) and light (e.g., 1.8kg), while extending up to 1.5m to allow for large-scale shape transformation. Inflatable actuation also provides a robust structure that can support heavy objects (e.g., 10 kg weight).

THING Lab    LiftTiles Website