MIT Media Lab - Tangible Media Group

projects

2009

Sourcemap

Leonardo Bonanni, Matthew Hockenberry, David Zwarg, Hiroshi Ishii

Sourcemap is a web-based tool for visualizing global supply chains and the history behind products. Built as a web 2.0 website ...

g-stalt

Jamie Zigelbaum, Daniel Leithinger, Alan Browning, Olivier Bau, Adam Kumpf, Hiroshi Ishii

In the g-stalt project we are exploring how to navigate large information spaces naturally, quickly, and seamlessly between graphical and physical ...

Trackmate

Adam Kumpf, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Keywon Chung, Daniel Leithinger, Jamie Zigelbaum, Hiroshi Ishii

Trackmate is an inexpensive, do-it-yourself tangible tracking system that allows your computer to recognize tagged objects and thier corresponding position ...

Stress OutSourced

Keywon Chung, Carnaven Chiu, Xiao Xiao, Peggy Pei-Yu Chi and Hiroshi Ishii

Stress OutSourced (SOS) is a peer-to-peer network that allows anonymous users to send each other therapeutic massages to relieve stress ...

WoW Pod

Cati Vaucelle, Steve Shada, Marisa Jahn, and Hiroshi Ishii

The WoW Pod is an immersive architectural space that provides and anticipates all life needs of the World of Warcraft player. Outfitted ...

AFK cookset

Cati Vaucelle and Hiroshi Ishii

The AFK cookset is designed for the hungry role playing gamer who can connect her food items to her avatar. By scanning ...

Gestural Interaction

Jamie Zigelbaum, Daniel Leithinger, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Adam Kumpf, Alan Browning, Olivier Bau, and Hiroshi Ishii

We are developing gestural interaction techniques and applications using the g-speak platform from Oblong Industries. This work seeks to blend the ...

ReLive

Jamie Zigelbaum, Nadav Aharony, and Marcelo Coelho

In ReLive our goal was to merge the pattern recognition systems in human beings with the best pattern recognition algorithms. So far ...

Radical Atoms

Hiroshi Ishii and Tangible Media Group

Radical Atoms is a new vision-driven design research on interactions with Dynamic Physical Material that can 1) conform to structural constraints ...

Relief

Daniel Leithinger, Adam Kumpf, Hiroshi Ishii

Relief is an actuated tabletop display, which is able to render and animate three-dimensional shapes with a malleable surface. It allows ...

O-Link

Toshihiro Nakae

O-Link is a communication tool developed by NTT Comware in collaboration with the Tangible Media group. O-Link allows users to ...

Idea Hatchery

Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Hiroshi Ishii

The Idea Hatchery is an hybrid environment for creative activities such as brainstorming and collaborative activities. It integrates seamlessly physical items such ...

2008

Wetpaint

Leonardo Bonanni, Xiao Xiao, Matthew Hockenberry, Praveen Subramani, Maurizio Seracini, Hiroshi Ishii

We introduce a technique for exploring multi-layered images by scraping arbitrary areas to determine meaningful relationships. Our system, called Wetpaint, uses ...

FretNot

Adam Kumpf, Hiroshi Ishii

FretNot is an exhibition to study the effects of physical constraints on musical composition and improvisation. Three guitars with unique fretboards are ...

Reality-Based Interaction

Robert Jacob (Tufts), Audrey Girouard (Tufts), Leanne M. Hirshfield (Tufts), Michael S. Horn (Tufts), Orit Shaer (Wellesley), Erin Treacy Solovey (Tufts), Jamie Zigelbaum (MIT)

Over the past two decades, HCI researchers have developed a broad range of new interfaces that diverge from the "window, icon, menu ...

Piezing

Amanda Parkes, Adam Kumpf

Piezing is an outfit which generates power using the natural gestures of the human body in motion. Around the joints of the ...

EMF Bracelet

Cati Vaucelle, Hiroshi Ishii, Joe Paradiso

We present the design of a cost-effective wearable sensor to detect and indicate the strength and other characteristics of the electric ...

Tangible Web

Leonardo Bonanni Matthew Hockenberry Xiao Xiao Bianca Cheng Costanzo Andrew Shum

How can digital content gain the kinds of value we associate with physical artifacts? The Tangible Web project is developing new types ...

External Legibility

Jamie Zigelbaum, Hiroshi Ishii

How to create interactions that are legible to more than a single user?

One of the most interesting concepts arising ...

2007

SpeakCup

Jamie Zigelbaum, Angela Chang, James Gouldstone, Joshua Jen Monzen, Michael Carvajal, Kevin Rustagi, and Hiroshi Ishii

SpeakCup is a digital voice recorder. Rather than being controlled via buttons and blinking lights, SpeakCup uses shape to proscribe function. It ...

Jabberstamp

Hayes Raffle, Cati Vaucelle, Ruibing Wang, Hiroshi Ishii

Jabberstamp is the the first tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices. To use Jabberstamp, children create drawings, collages ...

Picture This!

Cati Vaucelle, Hiroshi Ishii

Picture This! is a video editing tool progressing towards the child’s natural expression of play while telling stories with their toys.

Touch·Sensitive

Cati Vaucelle, Hiroshi Ishii, Yasmine Abbas

Touch·Sensitive is a wearable device that leverages stress and provides comfort for people on the move. It is determined by how ...

Slurp

Jamie Zigelbaum, Adam Kumpf, Alejandro Vasquez, Hiroshi Ishii

Slurp is tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp can ...

Ecoscale

Leonardo Bonanni, Hiroshi Ishii

Ecoscale is a tangible interface for life-cycle design of products. The system merges materials and components with environmental information based on ...

Shadowbox

Leonardo Bonanni, Greg Vargas, Neil Chao, Hiroshi Ishii

Shadowbox is a tangible workbench for the design of mirror physical-virtual environments through real-time spatial design and embedded hyper-links ...

Handsaw

Leonardo Bonanni, Jason Alonso, Greg Vargas, Neil Chao, Hiroshi Ishii

Handsaw is a novel interaction technique for tangible exploration of volumetric data by direct cut-plane projection. An outstretched hand or a ...

GrabIt

Hiroshi Ishii, Angela Chang, Adam Kumpf

GrabIt allows users to collaboratively explore the principles of power generation, transfer, and consumption via tangible wooden sticks. Pushing on one stick ...

The Sound of Touch

David Merrill and Hayes Raffle, Roberto Aimi

The Sound of Touch is a new instrument for real-time capture and sensitive physical stimulation of sound samples using digital convolution ...

2006

Disaster Simulation

Kazue Kobayashi*, Shinetsu Tsuchida*, Takaharu Omi*, Tatsuhito Kakizaki*, Takuma Hosokawa*, Atsunobu Narita*, Mitsunori Hirano*, Ichiro Kase* and Professor Hiroshi Ishii
* NTT Comware

Tangible Disaster Simulation System is a collaborative tool for planning disaster measures based on disaster simulation and evacuation simulation using Geographic Information ...

Senspectra

Vincent Leclerc, Amanda Parkes, Hiroshi Ishii

Senspectra is a computationally augmented physical modeling toolkit designed for sensing and visualization of structural strain. The system functions as a distributed ...

Remix+Robo Topobo

Hayes Raffle, Laura Yip, Hiroshi Ishii

Remix and Robo are two sampler/sequencer controllers that allow children to engage in (1) storytelling and (2) competitive endeavors with a ...

AR-Jig

Mahoro Anabuki, Richard Whitney, Jason Alonso, James Gouldstone, Angela Chang, Hiroshi Ishii

AR-Jig is a new handheld tangible user interface for 3D digital modeling. AR-Jig has a pin array that displays a ...

SP3X

Richard Whitney, Mahoro Anabuki, Hiroshi Ishii

SP3X is a new type of three-dimensional interface for creating, modifying, and navigating volumetric data. It combines the intuitive and improvisational ...

Psychohaptics

Cati Vaucelle, Leonardo Bonanni, Hiroshi Ishii

Touch is fundamental to our emotional well-being. Medical science is starting to understand and develop touch-based therapies for autism spectrum ...

BodyBeats

Jamie Zigelbaum, Amon Millner, Bella Desai, and Hiroshi Ishii

BodyBeats is three interfaces built to explore the interaction between children and computational musical instruments by using sound and music patterns. Our ...

2005

Glume

Vincent Leclerc, Amanda Parkes and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Glume is a computationally enhanced translucent modeling medium which offers a generalized modular scalable platform with the physical immediacy of a soft ...

PICO

James Patten, Jason Alonso, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

We are working to create a new type of human-computer interface, called PICO, by combining some of the usability advantages of ...

Topobo Backpacks

Hayes Raffle, Andy Lieserson, Amanda Parkes, Laura Yip, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Backpacks are a physical components with a button knob that children can attach to Topobo Actives to modify the speed, size, timing ...

I-Camera

Mahoro Anabuki and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

I-Camera is a tool for automatic representations of spatial relationships among photos for reviewing and analyzing the structure of a photographic ...

Playpals

Leonardo Bonanni, Jeff Lieberman, Cati Vaucelle, Orit Zuckerman

PlayPals are a set of figurines with their mechanical arms that provide children with a playful way to communicate between remote locations ...

Taptap

Leonardo Bonanni, Jeff Lieberman, Cati Vaucelle, Orit Zuckerman

The sense of touch is essential to emotional health and development. Taptap is a wearable accessory that can record, distribute and play ...

2004

I/O Brush

Kimiko Ryokai and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and ...

AirportSim

Dan Chak and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

AirportSim aids an airport manager interested in efficiency to distribute resources throughout a model airport, balancing cost with customer satisfaction. The AirportSim ...

Dan Chak and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Bridging the gap between textbook and laboratory learning, CircuiTUI leverages the power of both advanced real-time circuit simulation and the hands ...

Topobo

Hayes Raffle, Amanda Parkes, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

See Topobo at www.topobo.com

Topobo is a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory ...

Tangible Business Process Analyzer

Ryousuke Mori*,Naomi Toda*,Yuuji Wada*,Takuya Ogawa*, Ayano Kenmotsu*, Makoto Nakamura*,Megumi Eguchi*, Takeaki Yamamoto*,Kazue Kobayashi*, Atsunobu Narita*, Mitsunori Hirano*,Hideki Nakanishi*,Kazuhiko Tanaka*, Ichiro Kase* and Professor Hiroshi Ishii
* NTT Comware

Tangible Business Process Analyzer is a collaborative tool for designing what a company's business process should be, in business process re-engineering ...

2003

SandScape

Yao Wang, Assaf Biderman, Ben Piper, Carlo Ratti, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

SandScape is a tangible interface for designing and understanding landscapes through a variety of computational simulations using sand. Users view these simulations ...

Pins

Chad Dyner, Brad Kaanta, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Pins generates dynamic three-dimensional geometries within a tabletop environment serving both as volumetric display and co-spatial input device. Our goal ...

egaku

Jenn Yoon, Kimiko Ryokai, Chad Dyner, Jason Alonso, Umberto Malesci, Tyler Johnson, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

egaku is a tabletop user interface designed to enhance the ideation process with seamless image management tools. Designers sketch ideas as the ...

IP Network Design Workbench

Kazue Kobayashi*, Atsunobu Narita*, Mitsunori Hirano*, James Patten, Dan Chak, Jason Alonso, Kazuhiko Tanaka*, Ichiro Kase* and Professor Hiroshi Ishii
* NTT Comware

IP Network Design Workbench is a system to make performance simulation tools more accessible to a group of experts during the IP ...

Super Cilia Skin

Hayes Raffle, Mitchell Joachim, James Tichenor, Bryan Blumenkopf, George Heming, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Super Cilia Skin is a multi-modal interactive interface, conceived as a computationally enhanced membrane coupling tactile-kinesthetic input with tactile and ...

Plant Sensors

Dr. Rich Fletcher, Nikolai Slavov, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Plants are very common in our world and and contain a vast amount of information. Although there are open debates about the ...

Vehicle Safety Sensor

Dr. Rich Fletcher, Cheng-Wei Pei, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

We have built a low-cost ($10) 2.4 GHz Wireless safety sensor for vehicles. This transceiver and antenna mounted to the driver ...

Tangible Video Browser

Brygg Ullmer, Anna Lee, Nancy Sun, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Tangible Video Browser provides a tactile and efficient interface for viewing digital videos. Tokens act as both containers for a set ...

Phoxel Space

Dr. Carlo Ratti, Ben Piper, Yao Wang, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Phoxel-Space is an interface to enable the exploration of voxel data through the use of physical models and materials. Our goal ...

2002

Illuminating Clay

Ben Piper, Dr. Carlo Ratti, Yao Wang, Bo Zhu, Saro Getzoyan and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

This interface allows users to explore and analyze free form spatial models. Using this platform we explore the domain of landscape design ...

ComTouch

Angela Chang, Zahra Kanji, Dr. Sile O'Modhrain, Professor Robert Jacob, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

ComTouch project explores the interpersonal communication by use of haptic technology. Audio and video have been commonly used as medium for interpersonal ...

Supply Chain Visualization

James Patten, Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Professor Tom Malone*, Dr. Jim Hines*, Mary Murphy-Hoye***, Ben Koo**, John Quimby*, George Herman*, Chantz Strong*, and Paulo Goncalves * MIT Sloan School of Management ** MIT Leaders for Manufacturing Program *** Intel Corporation

The Supply Chain Visualization (SCVis) project provides a way for managers to physically construct and interact with models of how products flow ...

Audiopad

James Patten, Ben Recht, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts ...

Sensetable

James Patten, Gian Antonio Pangaro, Matt Reynolds, Jason Alonso, Joseph Panganiban, Jim Hines, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Sensetable is a system that wirelessly tracks the positions of multiple objects on a flat display surface quickly and accurately. The tracked ...

Tangible query interfaces

Brygg Ullmer, Zachary Malchano, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

This project is developing new means for querying relational databases and live datastreams through the manipulation of physical objects. Parameterized query fragments ...

Actuated Workbench

Gian Pangaro, Dan Maynes-Aminzade, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Actuated Workbench is a device that uses magnetic forces to move objects on a table in two dimensions. It is intended ...

Hover

Dan Mayes-Aminzade, Cati Vaucelle, Beng-Kiang Tan, Ken Goulding

Hover is a device that enhances remote telecommunication by providing a sense of the activity and presence of remote users. The motion ...

2001

Dolltalk

Cati Vaucelle and Hiroshi Ishii

Dolltalk is a gesture based storytelling system. Dolltalk captures, analyzes and interprets a set of gestures in parallel with analyzing changes in ...

CADcast

Ben Piper and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

CADcast is a system for projecting instructions into 3-D workspaces. It supports users in constructing three dimensional structures with greater efficiency ...

PegBlocks

Ben Piper, Matthew Karau, Beto Peliks and Hiroshi Ishii

Pegblocks are networked tactile transducers. As users manipulate the array of pegs, sliding them back and forth, motion is converted to electricity ...

LumiTouch

Angela Chang, Brad Koerner, Benjamin Resner, XingChen Wang, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Lumitouch system consists of a pair of interactive picture frames. When one user touches her picture frame, the other picture frame ...

Senseboard

Professor Robert Jacob, Gian Antonio Pangaro, James Patten, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Senseboard is one facet of our using tangible media for manipulating abstract information. It allows the user to arrange small magnetic pucks ...

genieBottles

Ali Mazalek, Alison Wood, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The genieBottles system presents a story that is told by three genies that live in glass bottles. When a bottle is opened ...

Tangible Viewpoints

Ali Mazalek, Alison Wood, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Tangible Viewpoints is a system for interacting with a character driven narrative. The different segments of a multiple point-of-view story ...

TellTale

Mike Ananny, Jean Barnwell, Professor Justine Cassell, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

TellTale is a story construction kit for children. Its goal is to help youngsters create and experiment with the structure and content ...

2000

Urban Simulation

John Underkoffler, Dan Chak, Zahra Kanji, Professor Eran Ben-Joseph (Department of Urban Studies and Planning), and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Furp ("Future of Urban Planning") project exists as a first step toward disseminating the work undertaken in the

pinwheels

Sandia Ren, Phil Frei, Seye Ojumu, Rujira Hongladaromp and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The pinwheels project continues the study of Ambient Fixtures to communicate digital information at the periphery of human ...

bottlogues

Ali Mazalek, Jay Lee and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

Glass bottles have been a part of human culture for thousands of years, serving both practical and aesthetic functions. The "bottles" project ...

Strata

Brygg Ullmer, James Patten, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Strata project explores the design of layered, electronically-augmented physical models that serve as tangible interfaces to specific dataspaces. Strata's first ...

GeoSCAPE

Profesor Hiroshi Ishii and Jay Lee

GeoSCAPE is a reconstructive tool for capturing measurement data in field archaeology and facilitating a 3-D visualization of an excavation rendered ...

Triangles and Narratives

Ali Mazalek, Tim Lu, Will Arora, Professor Hiroshi Ishii

This project explores ways in which people can create/navigate through non-linear narrative spaces using Triangles. Triangles

1999

musicBottles

Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Ali Mazalek, Jay Lee, Rich Fletcher, and Joe Paradiso

musicBottles introduces a tangible interface that deploys bottles as containers and controls for digital information. The system consists of a specially designed ...

TouchCounters

Paul Yarin, Clay Harmony, James Hsiao, Chris Leung, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

TouchCounters are computational tags that track the usage of physical objects. TouchCounters sense activity through magnetic, acceleration, and infrared sensors, and indicate ...

curlybot

Phil Frei, Victor Su, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

curlybot is an toy that can record and playback physical motion. As one plays with it, it remembers how it has been ...

HandSCAPE

Jay Lee, Sandia Ren, Victor Su, Rujira Hongladaromp, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

HandSCAPE is a vectorizing digital tape measure as an input device for digitizing field measurements, and visualizing the volume of the resulting ...

Personal Ambient Display

Craig Wisneski, Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Will Logan, Jeff Steinheider, Blair Dunn

Personal Ambient Displays are small, physical devices worn to display information to a person in a subtle, persistent, and private manner. They ...

musicbox

Brygg Ullmer and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

musicbox is a tangible interface supporting remote awareness through the medium of music and light. The musicbox is linked over the Internet ...

1998

mediaBlocks

Brygg Ullmer, Dylan Glas, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

mediaBlocks project is a tangible user interface based upon small, electronically tagged wooden blocks. The blocks serve as physical icons ("phicons") for ...

I/O Bulb and Luminous Room

John Underkoffler, Daniel Chak, Gustavo Santos, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The I/O Bulb and the Luminous Room are the two central ideas in a project whose goal is the pervasive transformation ...

Triangles

Matt Gorbet, Maggie Orth (Opera of the Future Group), Emily Cooper, James Hsiao, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

This project explores the creation and use of a physical/digital construction kit. Triangles is a physical computer interface in the form ...

inTouch

Scott Brave, Andrew Dahley, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

inTouch is a project to explore new forms of interpersonal communication through touch. Force-feedback technology is employed to create the illusion ...

PSyBench

Scott Brave, Colyn Bulthaup and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

PSyBench is a general platform for creating distributed Tangible Interfaces for collaborative design. Objects on an augmented tabletop are physically synchronized with ...

PingPongPlus

Craig Wisneski, Julian Orbanes, Ben Chun and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

PingPongPlus is a digitally enhanced version of the classic ping-pong game. It is played with ordinary, un-tethered paddles and balls ...

FishFace

Paul Yarin, Joshua Smith (Physics and Media Group), and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

FishFace is a gestural input device with proximal visual feedback. It detects motion using a "LazyFish" electric field module, and displays graphics ...

Ambient Fixtures

Andrew Dahley, Craig Wisneski, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

This project explores the use of physical fixtures and objects to display temporal information within an architectural space in a subtle and ...

Expressive KineticObjects

Professor Hiroshi Ishii and Andrew Dahley

To explore the use of motion of physical objects to convey information and emotion, we have designed a series of Expressive Kinetic ...

1997

metaDESK

Professor Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer

The metaDESK is our first platform for exploring the design of tangible user interfaces. The metaDESK integrates multiple 2D and 3D graphic ...

ambientROOM

Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Craig Wisneski, Matt Gorbet, Scott Brave, Andrew Dahley, Brygg Ullmer, and Paul Yarin

The ambientROOM is a Tangible Bits platform which explores the use of ambient media as a means of communicating information at the ...

transBOARD

Brygg Ullmer and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The transBOARD is a Tangible Bits platform which explores the use of a digitally-enhanced whiteboard as a model of a wall ...

mediaFlow

Brygg Ullmer and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

mediaFlow is the first project to interlink the multiple Tangible Bits platforms. mediaFlow uses Triangles to route the flow information such as ...

Proxy-Distributed Computation

Brygg Ullmer and Professor Hiroshi Ishii

The Tangible Bits platforms make complex use of physical objects and surfaces monitored by a range of sensors, augmented by a variety ...

Tangible Bits

Hiroshi Ishii and Tangible Media Group

Tangible Bits is our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) which guides our research in the Tangible Media Group.
People have ...

1995

Bricks

George W. Fitzmaurice, Hiroshi Ishii, and William Buxton
University of Toronto

Bricks is a Graspable User Interface which allows direct control of electronic or virtual objects through physical handles for control. These physical ...

1993

ClearBoard

Hiroshi Ishii and Minoru Kobayashi
NTT Human Interface Laboratories

ClearBoard is designed to integrate interpersonal space and shared workspace seamlessly. A design goal of ClearBoard is to allow a pair of ...

1990

Team Workstation

Hiroshi Ishii and Kazuho Arita (NTT Human Interface Laboratories)

TeamWorkStation was designed to provide seamless realtime shared drawing space for geographically distributed group. The key design idea of TeamWorkStation is a ...