Queen’s University’s Roel Vertegaal says self-levitating displays are a breakthrough in programmable matter, allowing physical interactions with mid-air virtual objects

KINGSTON, ON – An interactive swarm of flying 3D pixels (voxels) developed at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab is set to revolutionize the way people interact with virtual reality. The system, called BitDrones, allows users to explore virtual 3D information by interacting with physical self-levitating building blocks.

Queen’s professor Roel Vertegaal and his students are unveiling the BitDrones system on Monday, Nov. 9 at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Charlotte, North Carolina. BitDrones is the first step towards creating interactive self-levitating programmable matter – materials capable of changing their 3D shape in a programmable fashion – using swarms of nano quadcopters. The work highlights many possible applications for the new technology, including real-reality 3D modeling, gaming, molecular modeling, medical imaging, robotics and online information visualization.

Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab present 3D Printed Touch and Pressure Sensors at Interact'15 Conference

Queen's professor Roel Vertegaal and students Jesse Burstyn, Nicholas Fellion, and Paul Strohmeier, introduced PrintPut, a new method for integrating simple touch and pressure sensors directly into 3D printed objects. The project was unveiled at the INTERACT 2015 conference in Bamberg, Germany: one of the largest conferences in the field of of human-computer interaction. PrintPut is a method for 3D printing that embeds interactivity directly into printed objects. When developing new artifacts, designers often create prototypes to guide their design process about how an object should look, feel, and behave. PrintPut uses conductive filament to offer an assortment of sensors that an industrial designer can easily incorporate into these 3D designs, including buttons, pressure sensors, sliders, touchpads, and flex sensors.

Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab and the Microsoft Applied Sciences Group unveil DisplayCover at MobileHCI'15

Queen’s professor Roel Vertegaal and student Antonio Gomes, in collaboration with the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft, unveiled DisplayCover, a novel tablet cover that integrates a physical keyboard as well as a touch and stylus sensitive thin-film e-ink display. The technology was released at the ACM MobileHCI 2015 conference in Copenhagen - widely regarded as a leading conference on human-computer Interaction with mobile devices and services.

DisplayCover explores the ability to dynamically alter the peripheral display content based on usage context, while extending the user experience and interaction model to the horizontal plane, where hands naturally rest.