How do we bridge the physical and digital worlds? What kinds of new interfaces, sensors and actuation systems will allow people to seamlessly interact with the computing and physical parts of their lives? Imagine medical training, for instance, that through multi-sensory feedback and high fidelity enables students to practice open heart surgery without touching a real heart, yet giving them all the physical sensation of actually doing it. Or consider a game that enables any room to envelope you in a 3D experience incorporating your actual body movements to interact with the game environment.
Creating physicality involves a lot of different research directions.
- Dynamic shapes, motion and active sensing.
- Conscious manipulation using actuators that can cooperate and act together to accomplish a variety of tasks.
- Smart matter (micro-electromechanical systems or MEMS) that incorporate tiny mechanical devices such as sensors, valves, gears, mirrors, and actuators in semiconductor chips. (Smart matter already shows promise in such things as controlling automobile air-bags so they inflate according to the size of the person being protected.)
- Active perception through probe and instrument environments geared for task-specific perception.
Current projects include dynamic physical rendering, tangible user interfaces, physical telepresence for remote manipulation, and configurable objects and spaces (such as making a studio feel like a three-bedroom apartment). In physical rendering, for example, Intel is working with Carnegie Mellow University on a programmable matter known as claytronics that can be used for everything from human replicas capable of standing in for firefighters or disaster relief workers to rendering a nerve at ten times its normal size to make a damaged nerve ending easier to repair.
