Automorph: Bringing Rigor to the Creation of Morphing Interactive Devices

今天，手机和平板电脑的数量几乎和地球上的人口一样多。这是世界上机动车数量的七倍多。因此，令人惊讶的是，交互式设备行业仍然处于这样一个初级状态，例如依靠制造商的直觉来选择设备的形状-一个静态的平面矩形，类似于砖块。相比之下，自1879年第一辆奔驰汽车问世以来，汽车工业取得了相当大的进步。它现在有勤奋的模型（流体力学），系统的工具（模拟软件，风洞）和方法（复合材料铺设），为创造过程带来了严谨和创新，允许生产智能结构和变形材料，用于许多系统（例如汽车，风力涡轮机）。我们相信，现在是时候为互动设备行业带来类似的严格要求，以创造手机、平板电脑或其他设备，这些设备不仅适应人类互动，而且还利用一些用于制造汽车的基础科学的进步（例如图1，使用形状记忆合金的可重构触摸屏）。这种革命将从根本上改变互动设备的市场，不仅改变它们的形状以完全适应人类的形态，而且还具有变形能力：当启动游戏时，手机将卷曲其边缘以方便双手抓取；在写电子邮件时，平板电脑的表面会变成键盘，以改善触摸打字；在讲授大陆的形成时，孩子们会与驱动的表面进行物理互动和塑造，以体验地质力量的影响。这些例子仅仅触及了我们与变形交互设备交互方式的表面。这可以从根本上改变我们与计算机交互的方式，通过赋予它们以自然方式适应用户的能力，使它们具有普遍的通用性。然而，尽管在先进材料方面取得了巨大的突破，但变形交互设备的实现还很遥远。问题在于，工具和方法都局限于汽车行业，专注于大规模系统，而不是小规模系统，其结果是没有材料工程专业知识的研究人员无法企及的。更重要的是，整个设计过程需要深刻的反思，因为基础模型不再适用（例如流体力学）。相反，我们需要更复杂的人类互动模型，不仅包括互动的物理方面（运动），还包括人类的认知和感知。这些模型不仅有助于为交互设备行业创建工具和方法，而且还有助于对形状如何提供启示（对象的质量告诉我们如何使用它以及如何帮助我们使用它）的前所未有的理解，从而释放人类的交互潜力。

Today there are almost as many mobile phones and tablets as there are people on the earth. This is seven times more than the number of motor vehicles in the world. It is thus surprising that the industry of interactive device is still as such an elementary state, e.g. relying on manufacturer's gut feeling to choose the shape of devices - a static and planar rectangle resembling a brick. In comparison the automobile industry has made considerable advances since the first Benz Motor Car in 1879. It now has diligent models (fluid mechanics), systematic tools (simulation software, wind tunnels) and methods (composite lay-up) that brought rigor and innovation to the creation process, allowing the production of intelligent structures and morphing materials used in many systems (e.g. cars, wind turbines). We believe that time has come to bring similar rigor to the industry of interactive device in order to create phones, tablets or other devices that are not only adapted to human interaction but also exploit the advances made in some of the fundamental sciences used to create automotive (e.g. Fig.1 a reconfigurable touchscreen using Shape Memory Alloys).Such revolution could fundamentally transfigure the market of interactive devices, not only changing their shapes to be fully adapted to the human morphology, but also enabling morphing abilities: when launching a game, a phone would curl its edges to facilitate grasping with two hands; when writing an email, a tablet surface would transform into a keyboard to improve touch-typing; when teaching about the formation of continents, children would physically interact with and mould actuated surfaces in order to experience the impact of geological forces. These examples only scratch the surface in terms of ways in which we can interact with morphing interactive devices. This can radically change the way we interact with computers, making them universally versatile by endowing them with the ability to adapt themselves to the users in a natural way.However, implementation of morphing interactive devices is far off despite tremendous breakthroughs in advanced materials. The problem is that tools and methods are confined to the automotive industry, focused on large-scale systems rather than small scale ones, and whose outcomes are out-of-reach of researchers with no expertise in material engineering. More importantly the entire design process requires a profound rethinking, as the underlying models do not apply anymore (e.g. fluid mechanics). Instead we need models of human interactions that are substantially more complex, encompassing not only the physical aspects of interaction (motor) but also human cognition and perception. Such models will not only help creating tools and methods for the interactive devices industry, but also contribute an unprecedented understanding of how shapes provide affordances (quality of an object to tell us how it wants to be used and how it helps us to use it) that can unleash the humans' interactive potential.