Abstract
Smart materials offer new possibilities for creating engaging and interesting forms of interaction and ways of displaying information in a material way. In this paper we describe Follow the Grass, a concept of an interactive pervasive display for public spaces. The display will be built up out of a number of blades of grass that are actuated in eight directions using nitinol muscle wires (i.e. a shape-memory alloy). A Microsoft Kinect-based tracking system is employed to detect users’ presence. Follow the Grass can be used for entertainment purposes by displaying animations through movement of the grass, as well as for indoor way-finding and ambient persuasive guidance. We present a number of scenarios with varying scales of interaction, and different applications, followed by a description of the initial hardware design of a single blade of grass and its actuated root. We will give a description of the tracking system, and how it tracks users and is capable of identifying individuals. Finally we will provide suggestions for the further development.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Boehm, G.: Ambient persuasive guidance. In: Proc. of the 5th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI 2011, pp. 431–432. ACM, New York (2011)
Brownell, K., Stunkard, A., Albaum, J.: Evaluation and modification of exercise patterns in the natural environment. American Journal of Psychiatry (1980)
Coelho, M., Ishii, H., Maes, P.: Surflex: a programmable surface for the design of tangible interfaces. In: CHI 2008 Ext. Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2008, pp. 3429–3434. ACM, New York (2008)
Coelho, M., Maes, P.: Sprout I/O: a texturally rich interface. In: Proc. of the 2nd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, TEI 2008, pp. 221–222. ACM, New York (2008)
Coelho, M., Maes, P.: Shutters: a permeable surface for environmental control and communication. In: Proc. of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, TEI 2009, pp. 13–18. ACM, New York (2009)
Coelho, M., Zigelbaum, J.: Shape-changing interfaces. Personal Ubiquitous Computing 15, 161–173 (2011)
Fitzmaurice, G.W., Ishii, H., Buxton, W.A.S.: Bricks: laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces. In: Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 1995, pp. 442–449. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York (1995)
Furukawa, M., Yoshikawa, H., Hachisu, T., Fukushima, S., Kajimoto, H.: “Vection field” for pedestrian traffic control. In: Proc. of the 2nd Augmented Human International Conference, AH 2011, pp. 19:1–19:8. ACM, NY (2011)
Heiner, J.M., Hudson, S.E., Tanaka, K.: The information percolator: ambient information display in a decorative object. In: Proc. of the 12th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 1999, pp. 141–148. ACM, New York (1999)
Ishii, H., Lakatos, D., Bonanni, L., Labrune, J.B.: Radical atoms: beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials. Interactions 19(1), 38–51 (2012)
Ishii, H., Ullmer, B.: Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In: Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 1997, pp. 234–241. ACM, New York (1997)
Ishii, H., Wisneski, C., Brave, S., Dahley, A., Gorbet, M., Ullmer, B., Yarin, P.: ambientroom: integrating ambient media with architectural space. In: CHI 1998 Conference Summary on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 1998, pp. 173–174. ACM, New York (1998)
Jacob, R.J., Girouard, A., Hirshfield, L.M., Horn, M.S., Shaer, O., Solovey, E.T., Zigelbaum, J.: Reality-based interaction: a framework for post-wimp interfaces. In: Proc. of the 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2008, pp. 201–210. ACM, New York (2008)
Jafarinaimi, N., Forlizzi, J., Hurst, A., Zimmerman, J.: Breakaway: an ambient display designed to change human behavior. In: CHI 2005 Ext. Abs. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2005, pp. 1945–1948. ACM, New York (2005)
Jung, H., Altieri, Y.L., Bardzell, J.: Skin: designing aesthetic interactive surfaces. In: Proc. of the Fourth Conf. on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI 2010, pp. 85–92. ACM, New York (2010)
Kaptein, M., Markopoulos, P., de Ruyter, B., Aarts, E.: Persuasion in ambient intelligence. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing 1, 43–56 (2010), doi:10.1007/s12652-009-0005-3
Masson, N., Mackay, W.E.: WeMe: Seamless Active and Passive Liquid Communication. In: Jacko, J.A. (ed.) HCI International 2009, Part II. LNCS, vol. 5611, pp. 694–700. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Minuto, A., Vyas, D., Poelman, W., Nijholt, A.: Smart material interfaces: A vision. In: Proc. 4th International ICST Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN 2011). LNICST, vol. 78, pp. 57–62. Springer (2011)
Parkes, A., Ishii, H.: Bosu: a physical programmable design tool for transformability with soft mechanics. In: Proc. of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2010, pp. 189–198. ACM, New York (2010)
Poupyrev, I., Nashida, T., Maruyama, S., Rekimoto, J., Yamaji, Y.: Lumen: interactive visual and shape display for calm computing. In: ACM SIGGRAPH 2004 Emerging technologies. SIGGRAPH 2004, p. 17. ACM, New York (2004)
Prante, T., Stenzel, R., Röcker, C., Streitz, N., Magerkurth, C.: Ambient agoras: Inforiver, siam, hello.wall. In: CHI 2004 Ext. Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2004, pp. 763–764. ACM, New York (2004)
Raffle, H., Joachim, M.W., Tichenor, J.: Super cilia skin: An interactive membrane. Human Factors, 808–809 (2003)
Rogers, Y., Hazlewood, W.R., Marshall, P., Dalton, N., Hertrich, S.: Ambient influence: can twinkly lights lure and abstract representations trigger behavioral change? In: Proc. of the 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Ubicomp 2010, pp. 261–270. ACM, New York (2010)
Vande Moere, A.: Beyond the tyranny of the pixel: Exploring the physicality of information visualization. In: 12th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IV 2008, pp. 469–474 (July 2008)
Wakita, A., Shibutani, M., Tsuji, K.: Emotional Smart Materials. In: Jacko, J.A. (ed.) HCI International 2009, Part III. LNCS, vol. 5612, pp. 802–805. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Weiser, M.: The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, 94–104 (1991)
Wisneski, C., Ishii, H., Dahley, A., Gorbet, M., Brave, S., Ullmer, B., Yarin, P.: Ambient Displays: Turning Architectural Space into an Interface between People and Digital Information. In: Yuan, F., Konomi, S., Burkhardt, H.-J. (eds.) CoBuild 1998. LNCS, vol. 1370, pp. 22–32. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Minuto, A., Huisman, G., Nijholt, A. (2012). Follow the Grass: A Smart Material Interactive Pervasive Display. In: Herrlich, M., Malaka, R., Masuch, M. (eds) Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2012. ICEC 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7522. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33542-6_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33542-6_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33541-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33542-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)