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鈥慜鈥橞rien, Vatsal Mehta, Nicholas Colonnese, Aakar Gupta, Carson Bruns, Priyanshu Agarwal. 2023. "". 聽In: Proceedings of IEEE World Haptics Conference (Delft, Netherlands, July 10鈥13, 2023).

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

Purnendu,听S Novack, E Acome, C Keplinger,听M Alistar,听MD Gross,听C Bruns,听D Leithinger.聽2021.听"". In:聽Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS 鈥21). (June 28-July 2,听2021Virtual 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鈥揗ay 8-13, 2021).