InFORM The Morphing Table Gets Even More Interactive

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Remember last week’s post on the inFORM, MIT’s morphing table? Well they just released a new video showing off what it can do, and it’s pretty impressive.

The new setup features two separate interfaces, and they’ve added a display  so you can see the person who is manipulating the surface. This springs to life a whole new realm of possibilities for the tactile digital experience. The inFORM also has a projector shining on the surface, which allows the objects shown from the other side to be both visually and physically seen — they use an example of opening a book and displaying its pages on the surface. To track the hand movements they use a plain old Microsoft Kinect, which works extremely well. They also show off the table as a standalone unit, an interactive table — Now all they need to do is make the pixels smaller… 

Stick around after the break to see some more awesome examples of the possibilities of this new tactile-digital interface. There are also some great clips near the end of the video showing off the complex linkage system that makes it all work.

[via Gizmodo]

21 thoughts on “InFORM The Morphing Table Gets Even More Interactive

  1. So if you look back about a year or two in the comments Ive left on here this is actually my idea I posted a while back. I have to say I am grateful to get to see my idea take shape. I think they hit exactly what I was envisioning when I was posting on the racks of pins that you put on your hand and they make another hand. Now if they can shrink the tubes and the mechanism to move them this has serious potential.

  2. 900 actuators, I wonder what the power draw and cost of it is.
    Because I think we’ve all thought about the concept in the past, but it’s the pricetag that really kept normal hackers from trying it I expect.

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