Since the fall of 2004, Canon has been collaborating with the MIT Media Lab, seeking new core concepts and technologies for Canon to research over the next ten years. As a first collaboration, the Tangible Media group, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, and Canon have been working to fuse Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) and Mixed Reality (MR). As a result of two years of intensive collaboration, several projects, such as I-Camera, SP3X, and AR-Jig, for the fusion of TUI and MR have been created.

One of the collaboration projects is proposing a new, handheld tangible user interface, AR-Jig, for 3D digital modeling. AR-Jig has a pin array that displays a 2D physical curve coincident with a contour of a digitally-displayed 3D form. It allows physical interaction with a portion of a 3D digital representation, allowing 3D forms to be directly touched and modified. In contrast to traditional TUIs, which physically embody the entirety of data, this project leaves the majority of the data in the digital domain but gives physicality to any portion of the larger digital dataset via a handheld tool. This intersection of tangible and digital tools results in the ability to flexibly manipulate digital artifacts both tangibly and virtually.