How Your Coffee Table Could Pass Your Coffee 55
mikejuk writes with this tantalizing excerpt about one possible future of furniture:"The mechanism of MIT's new shapeshifting output device is remarkably simple. It is based on the well known pin screen devices that you can use to take a 3D impression of an object. A 2D plate of pins can be moved to create a surface.In the same way, inForm uses a set of rods and actuators to create dynamic surfaces. The big difference is that the actuators are under computer control. Now you have a computer controlled surface and what is really surprising is how much you can get from this simple idea. With the help of a 3D depth camera and some innovative software, the surface can act as an output device that lets you manipulate real objects remotely. If you use the surface as a table then your computer can bring you real objects such as your mobile phone — see the video to believe it. While there are many obvious serious applications such as displaying volumetric CT scans, displaying complex data or providing early experience of prototypes there is also the possibility of having fun with the device. After all simple pinscreens are still sold as executive toys. Could there be a new generation of games in this?"
And? (Score:3)
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You know what's coming. (Score:3)
One word: Tablejob.
MIT's new shapeshifting output device (Score:2)
Rene Auberjenois wants a word with you guys, something about prior art.
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Because then instead of only n by n actuators to actually move the pins, you would need n by n actuators to lock/unlock the pins plus your "moving actuators" plus something to move them.
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The actuators themselves are probably not even that expensive. A decent stepping motor can be had at under ~$10 if you buy a large enough quantity.
I spent a few years building packaging machines that used that kind of things. Even with more expensive actuators that can move a few kilograms the cost of "actually installing and aligning them" in the machine is multiple times the price of the actual actuator. Having an actuator "move" between different parts it has to actuate feels like it's going to take one
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Consider raising a pin which is just barely under the side of a cup. Chances are the cup will slide sideways away from the pin.
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Until someone breaks into the system and deliberately spills your coffee.
At Last! (Score:2, Funny)
The ability to punch somebody over the Internet.
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Today its not useful. That is how most technology starts. Great to see you are so limited in your thinking.
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this skeptic is stoked (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel your anger towards 'internet hype' in general but I gotta be honest I thought this was cool.
'coffee table that can pass your drink' is a contextualization of the technology for a sort of 'pop-science' audience...looking at the tech I think it has legs.
I make tshirts (and do tech consulting)...my goal is to produce tshirts from US grown hemp...I can def imagine an application of this technology at
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Programmable furniture (Score:2)
Are you kidding? Maybe not as a table, but I would *love* to have a living room floor made out of this stuff. Furniture that forms and dissipates on command, how cool would that be? Not to mention I bet it could make a pretty awesome massage chair.
Where's the porn? (Score:2)
Like all technology, we won't know that it's viable until they make porn with it.
Cool (Score:2)
That is cool. But at the same time it is also the most lame way I could imagine to move stuff around.
All the examples they show could be done better with a robot hand or two, with a FAR smaller number of actuators.
Software that detects the position of each finger already exists.
Watch the video (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so impressive about this isn't in the summary. The cool part is that they developers have already considered (and built prototypes) of all kinds of interactive models that this could support. Remote control, tactile user interfaces, light and color manipulation, soooo much more than "bring me my phone".
The video blows the summary out of the water.
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sort my Duplos (Score:2)
Not new (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't really anything new. Here's another example of similar technology by Festo used in materials handling/sorting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVUx_0VN5PQ [youtube.com]
A link without a million ad scripts. (Score:4, Insightful)
Drop NoScript on the first few, then a dozen more come up. I won't use that kind of site. Here's a better link. [youtube.com]
Cleaning it though... (Score:1)
Been done. (Score:4, Informative)
This idea has come around many times. Howard Hughes, when he was recovering from an accident, had a bed custom-made for him with many foam pads on screw jacks. (This was the inspiration for the CGI version of such a bed in the Wolverine movie.) The Festo Wave surface is a nice implementation, especially because it's composed of a large number of identical units that latch together and make electrical and pneumatic connections.
Back in the 1970s, there was a 3D plotter which had an X-Y positioner and a big spool of stiff wire, which it would push through a sheet of wallboard to the desired height and cut off. Because all the machinery was under the table, it looked impressive, as 3D graphs made of many thin wires appeared above the table.
There's another way to move objects around on a surface. If you have a flat plate which can be vibrated in X, Y, and rotation [roboticsproceedings.org], you can move objects around on it. If you vibrate something with a sawtooth wave, during the slow part of the ramp, you move objects by static friction. But during the steep return part of the ramp, you accelerate the plate fast enough to get out of the static friction region, so the object slips slightly.
But you can do more. By combining rotational and linear vibration, you can affect some objects more than others. For pure rotational vibration, objects near the center of rotation aren't affected. By appropriate combinations of rotational and translational vibration, multiple objects can be moved around independently. There was a demo of this as a robot chessboard about ten years ago. UPS was interested in it for box sorting, but it didn't work out with mixed real-world boxes.
Nope (Score:2)
I don't see any possible "new generation of games" based upon passing me my coffee cup.
At least not as long as I'm still able to reach over and pick it up myself.
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The bar at your local tavern can move your beer out of reach when it thinks you've had enough.
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I don't see any possible "new generation of games" based upon passing me my coffee cup.
At least not as long as I'm still able to reach over and pick it up myself.
Oh come on! That video had Pong written all over it.