Watch MIT's Kinetic Shape Display Move Objects and Build Structures

A major hurdle for virtual reality is haptic feedback, or touch—the control of virtual surfaces and objects with our bodies and gestures. Assuming VR delivers on its promise, haptic products are the future. But MIT’s Tangible Media Group, led by professor Hiroshi Ishii, is taking quite the opposite approach: they’re using digital environments to create gestures and move objects in our three-dimensional world.

Their latest project, Kinetic Blocks, is a “pin-based shape display” that gives digital information a physical form. These blocks also have, as the Tangible Media Group explains, “inherent ability to accurately move and manipulate objects placed on top of them.” The researchers demonstrate the wizardry of the Kinetic Blocks in a new video, which is equal parts complex and delightful.

Kinetic Blocks from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.

As the group notes, the shape display is capable of assembling, disassembling and reassembling structures “from simple passive building blocks through stacking, scaffolding, and catapulting”. As seen in the videos, the blocks are able to transform vertical pin movements into rotation and horizontal movements, amongst “other degrees of freedom”.

The movements start out simple enough. But, as the video unfolds, researchers trigger more and more complex movements and structures, especially when they incorporate magnetic blocks into the system. And with special modules, researchers can “sense” the module’s movement through the shape display’s pins.

This isn’t the first time the TMG has used pins to create virtual-to-physical world movement. Last year, the group released a video showcasing inFORM, a “touch” display system that allows a person to manipulate the real, 3D world from the digital realm. A depth camera tracked the user’s gestures, then sent them to inFORM, a system that works a bit like a mixing board crossed with 300 bicycle breaks, which move the pin up and down to render arms and movement.

Kinetic Blocks also clearly builds on the group’s work on Transform, a three-dimensional shape display interface that reacts to movement and emotion. While Kinetic Blocks won’t create any geometric lullabies like Transform, it does have us thinking of the future of self-assembling nanobots—which is either exciting or terrifying, depending on your disposition toward technology.

Click here to see more of Tangible Media Group’s work.

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