Shape displays enable people to touch simulated surfaces. A common architecture of such devices uses a mechatronic pin-matrix. Besides their complexity and high cost, these matrix displays suffer from sharp edges due to the discreet representation which reduces their ability to render a large continuous surface when sliding the hand. We propose using an engineered auxetic material actuated by a smaller number of motors. The material bends in multiple directions, feeling smooth and rigid to touch. A prototype implementation uses nine actuators on a 220\u2009mm square section of material. It can display a range of surface curvatures under the palm of a user without aliased edges. In this work we use an auxetic skeleton to provide rigidity on a soft material and demonstrate the potential of this class of surface through user experiments.<\/p>\n
Read the full paper: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-021-24974-0
\nSteed, A., Ofek, E., Sinclair, M., Gonzalez-Franco, M. A mechatronic shape display based on auxetic materials. Nat Commun 12, 4758 (2021).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shape displays enable people to touch simulated surfaces. A common architecture of such devices uses a mechatronic pin-matrix. Besides their complexity and high cost, these matrix displays suffer from sharp edges due to the discreet representation which reduces their ability to render a large continuous surface when sliding the hand. We propose using an engineered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":784501,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[13552,13554],"msr-video-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-784498","msr-video","type-msr-video","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-area-hardware-devices","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3oRe6TTEG-8","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_video_file":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/784498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-video"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/784498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":784504,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/784498\/revisions\/784504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=784498"},{"taxonomy":"msr-video-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video-type?post=784498"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=784498"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=784498"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=784498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}