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Madgets: actuating widgets on interactive tabletops

Published: 03 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

We present a system for the actuation of tangible magnetic widgets (Madgets) on interactive tabletops. Our system combines electromagnetic actuation with fiber optic tracking to move and operate physical controls. The presented mechanism supports actuating complex tangibles that consist of multiple parts. A grid of optical fibers transmits marker positions past our actuation hardware to cameras below the table. We introduce a visual tracking algorithm that is able to detect objects and touches from the strongly sub-sampled video input of that grid. Six sample Madgets illustrate the capabilities of our approach, ranging from tangential movement and height actuation to inductive power transfer. Madgets combine the benefits of passive, untethered, and translucent tangibles with the ability to actuate them with multiple degrees of freedom.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '10: Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2010
    476 pages
    ISBN:9781450302715
    DOI:10.1145/1866029
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 03 October 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. actuation
    2. multi-touch
    3. tabletop interaction
    4. tangible user interfaces
    5. widgets

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    • (2024)“Push-That-There”: Tabletop Multi-robot Object Manipulation via Multimodal 'Object-level Instruction'Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661542(2497-2513)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Reconfigurable Interfaces by Shape Change and Embedded MagnetsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642802(1-12)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)MagneSwift: Low-Cost, Interactive Shape Display Leveraging Magnetic MaterialsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642058(1-11)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)HAPmini: 2D haptic feedback generation using single actuator devicePLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.028500218:4(e0285002)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2023
    • (2023)Low-cost and Non-visual Labels Using Magnetic PrintingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35932327:EICS(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
    • (2023)FluxTangible: Simple and Dynamic Haptic Tangible with Bumps and VibrationsAdjunct Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3586182.3615762(1-3)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Towards Applied Remapped Physical-Virtual Interfaces: Synchronization Methods for Resolving Control State ConflictsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580723(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)Demonstrating MagneTisch: Tangibles in Motion on an Interactive SurfaceProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202210.1145/3543758.3547520(590-593)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2022
    • (2022)MagneShape: A Non-electrical Pin-Based Shape-Changing DisplayProceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526113.3545645(1-12)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
    • (2022)Layer by Layer, Patterned Valves Enable Programmable Soft SurfacesProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35172516:1(1-25)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2022
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