Hello, my name is Ken Nakagaki, I'm a 5th year PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, Tangible Media Group.
In this video, I'm very very excited to talk about my latest research paper, named HERMITS, here from my homelab!
Prior research in actuated tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have explored a variety of approaches to embody dynamic digital information.
Our paper, HERMITS, named after hermit crabs, intends to contribute to this effort by introducing an addition of mechanical external attachments, defined as 'mechanical shell' add-ons.
While the self-propelled TUIs have limited interactivity, the passive attachments greatly extend the capability of the core hardware for reconfigurable interactions.
Previously, HCI researchers have explored a way to activate passive materials or objects with actuated TUIs for interactivity.
Within such stream of research, there is an open research space to extend the interactivity of self-propelled TUIs...
...using passive modules with embedded mechanisms to extend and reconfigure the movement-based interactions.
So, in our paper we introduce the concept of mechanical shells, which we define as...
...“External passive attachments to self-propelled TUIs that can be automatically attached or detached.”
In our paper, we explored a rich set of vocabulary for designing versatile mechanical shells.
For example, 'shape' is the simplest property to be converted by interchanging the mechanical shells.
They can also extend light output, by using optical fibers, to extend the indicator LED light of the hardware.
Extension of the motion is the key property in the deeding space.
Rotation of the robotic hardware, for example, can be converted to vertical linear motion.
Also, the speed and torque of rotation can be converted to achieve specific tasks such as generating wind or walking over uneven surfaces.
One of the very unique feature of HERMITS is that multiple module of self-propelled devices can cooperate together to activate single mechanical shell.
With this capability, for example, the robotic devices can achieve rather complex interactivity or motion with multi degree of freedom, for robotic application and I/O devices.
Additionally, the multiple robots can work together to generate greater speed or force either by stacking to each other or by pushing single mechanical shell in parallel.
So, as for the implementation of the system, we employed and modified an off-the-shelf two-wheeled robotic toy named 'toio'.
We have modified the original hardware to add vertically moving pin for robust docking.
We have also developed control system architecture to control multiple robots based on toio API for prototyping the interactions.
We have also defined 4 primitive designs for mechanical shells, which became the basis for the mechanical shells to convert motions in different ways.
In our application space, we demonstrated three potential use cases.
Firstly, HERMITS can be used for physical space reconfiguration, for example an adaptive and assistive desktop.
It can also be used for interaction with digital data.
In our paper, we discuss the use for tangible mobility simulation where mechanical shells can be interchanged to...
...represent different vehicles or agents in simulated urban model but in dynamic tangible form.
Animated storytelling demonstrates to convey story by interchanging the mechanical shells where each robotic module acts as an actor on the stage.
They can switch the mechanical shells just like changing costumes in the back stage in a theater, and appear on the front stage for interactivity.
Lastly, the future work in our paper discuss a broad set of research opportunities,...
...and we hope our general methodology inspires a variety of research streams in the community including haptic devices, as well as mechanism fabrication research.
Please find more details for both implementation and concept in two of our papers being published in this year’s UIST.
Lastly, I would like to thank my co-authors and collaborators, who have given a great great support to put this work together remotely.
Thank you very much.