./Trilaterate: A Fabrication Pipeline to Design and 3D Print Hover-, Touch-, and Force-Sensitive Objects

Martin Schmitz, Martin Stitz, Florian Müller, Markus Funk, Max Mühlhäuser

CHI 2019

Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '19

TL;DR

What we did: We built Trilaterate, a fabrication pipeline that enables users to 3D print custom objects capable of detecting hover, touch, and force interactions through embedded capacitive sensors.

What we found: We found that Trilaterate successfully allows for the estimation of a finger's 3D position using capacitive trilateration, significantly improving interaction accuracy and reducing assembly effort.

Takeaway: Our work demonstrates that integrating capacitive sensing into 3D printed objects can enhance user interaction possibilities in various applications, paving the way for more expressive and multifunctional designs.

Abstract

Hover, touch, and force are promising input modalities that get increasingly integrated into screens and everyday objects. However, these interactions are often limited to fat surfaces and the integration of suitable sensors is time-consuming and costly. To alleviate these limitations, we contribute Tri-laterate: A fabrication pipeline to 3D print custom objects that detect the 3D position of a fnger hovering, touching, or forcing them by combining multiple capacitance measurements via capacitive trilateration. Trilaterate places and routes actively-shielded sensors inside the object and operates on consumer-level 3D printers. We present technical evaluations and example applications that validate and demonstrate the wide applicability of Trilaterate. CCS CONCEPTS Human-centered computing Interaction devices; Hardware Tactile and hand-based interfaces;

Abstract

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