Bezalel - Towards low-cost pin-based shape displays

The usage of shape changing interfaces is widely discussed in the HCI field as a promising strategy for the physical representation of digital data. Such interfaces are expected to greatly impact a wide range of applications, such as virtual reality, architectural design and education of blind people. Unfortunately, the widespread usage of pin-based shape displays is currently limited by their typically high manufacturing costs. The high costs of pin-based shape displays are mainly due to the number of actuators, which tends to grow quadratically with display resolution. Given that, we present Bezalel: a solution for pin-based shape displays that allows 2 actuators to efficiently actuate pin-based shape displays with n pins. Our solution is able to fully render any 2.5D shape within a time proportional to , which outperforms the 2014 Lemelson-MIT ”Use it!” graduate winner solution using half as much actuators. Additionally, results also show that, for specific shapes, our approach can perform as well as the most efficient and much more expensive technologies currently used. We expect that our solution will make it possible to create low-cost actuated surfaces with different sizes, from small tactile objects to large structures such as shape-changing floors.