Participants: Mark Zadel, Paul Kosek, Marcelo M. Wanderley (supervisor).

Project Type: Seminar project.

Period: Fall 2003. Status: Completed.

This project started as two independent projects during the HCI - Gestural Control of Music graduate seminar in the Fall 2003: a pliable interface using various flex sensors developed by Mark Zadel, and an inertial interface using accelerometers and giroscopes, developed by Paul Kosek.

The idea to put both devices together provided a final tangible interface that could respond to several gestures: hitting, shaking, turning, folding, twisting, etc.

Another interesting feature of the final device was the feel of the interface. Because the flex sensors were placed on a sort of perpendicular grid, small amplitude gestures can separably affect specific sensors (horizontal ones or vertical ones). When performing radical foldings though, all sensors are somehow affected (see figure below), providing an integrated controller where the visualization of the individual sensor states is lost.

Unpublished report on the pliable interface, by Zadel, Kosek and Wanderley, 2004.