A Pliable, Inertial Interface

Participants: Mark Zadel
Paul Kosek
Marcelo M. Wanderley (supervisor)
Pliable interface prototype.
Funding:

Project Type: Seminar project
Time Period: Fall 2003 (Completed)

Description

This project started as two independent projects during the HCI - Gestural Control of Music graduate seminar in the Fall 2003: a pliable interface using various flex sensors developed by Mark Zadel, and an inertial interface using accelerometers and gyroscopes, developed by Paul Kosek.

Arrangement of flexion sensors inside the interface.

The idea to put both devices together provided a final tangible interface that could respond to several gestures: hitting, shaking, turning, folding, twisting, etc.

Another interesting feature of the final device was the feel of the interface. Because the flex sensors were placed on a sort of perpendicular grid, small amplitude gestures can separably affect specific sensors (horizontal ones or vertical ones). When performing radical foldings though, all sensors are somehow affected (see figure below), providing an integrated controller where the visualization of the individual sensor states is lost.

The pliable interface can sense a variety of gestures.


Publications

2004

Mark Zadel, Paul  C. Kosek and Marcelo  M. Wanderley. "An Inertial, Pliable Interface". Technical report number MUMT-IDMIL-04-01, 2004.