Paper Reading #6: ZeroN: mid-air tangible interaction enabled by computer controlled magnetic levitation

Paper Reading #6: ZeroN: mid-air tangible interaction enabled by computer controlled magnetic levitation 

Intro:

• Title - ZeroN: mid-air tangible interaction enabled by computer controlled magnetic levitation
• Reference Information:
  
  

  ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces.
  General terms: Design, Human Factors

  
  

  Keywords: Tangible Interfaces, 3D UI.

  
  
• Author Bios - Jinha Lee, Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii

Hiroshi ishii is a Professor at MIT and leader of the Tangible Media Group, which explores the tangible bits vision to seamlessly couple the dual world of bits and atoms by giving physical form to digital information. Also, has an impressive publication count of 154, dating back to 1990.

Jihna Lee was a graduate research assistant for the Tangible Media Group, and now works at the MIT Media Laboratory.

Rehmi Post works at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms. He has 4 publications dating from 1994 to 2012.

Summary:

The work of this paper is called ZeroN, a new tangible interface element that can be levitated and moved freely by a computer in a three dimensional space. ZeroN serves as a tangible representation of a 3D coordinate of the virtual world through which users can se, feel, and control computation. This is done by using a magnetic control system that can levitate and actuate a permanent magnet in a predefined 3D volume. There is also optical tracking and display system that projects images on the levitating object.

Related work not referenced in the paper:

1. Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces - B. Ullmer, H. Ishii 
2. The reacTable: exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces - Sergi Jorda, Gunter Geiger, Marcos Alonso, Martin Kalenbrunner
3. Tangible interfaces for remote collaboration and communication - Scott Brave, Hiroshi Ishii, Andrew Dahley
4. A taxonomy for and analysis of tangible interfaces - Kenneth P. Fishkin
5. Classroom collaboration in the design of tangible interfaces for storytelling - Danae Stanton, Victor Bayon, Helen Neale, Ahmed Ghali, Steve Benford
6. The actuated workbench: computer-controlled actuation in tabletop tangible interfaces - Gian Pangaro, Dan Mayes-Aminzade, Hiroshi Ishii
7. Extending tangible interfaces for education: digital montessori-inspired manipulatives - Oren Zuckerman, Saeed Arida, Mitchell Rescind
8. Do tangible interfaces enhance learning? - Paul Marshall
9. Tangible Query Interfaces: Physically constrained tokens for manipulating database queries - B. Ullmer, H. Ishhii, R. Jacob
10. 3D user interfaces : theory and practice - Doug A. Bowman, Joseph J. Laviola, Ernst Kruijff

The area of Tangible Interfaces and 3D displays with interactions is an area of work that has seen some considerable research. Thera are many different varieties to how the 3D interfaces are depicted. Some use clay or robotics, while others use magnets, like in ZeroN. ZeroN separates itself though, by focusing on achieving a collocated I/O by actuating an I/O object along the 3D paths through absolute coordinates of the physical space. ZeroN also focuses on allowing the user to manipulate computational controlled objects without extra armatures or other physical tethering that related works had to use.

Evaluation:

The authors first evaluated the work of their project by having a user study and getting feedback on how the system felt and operated. This gave some comments and feelings on possible improvements, as well as praises (qualitative, subjective). There was also a technical evaluation of the system. Measurements of the max levitation height and speed of actuation (quantitative, objective). There was also study on the different degrees of freedom and the resolution of the 3D display. Overall, this was quite a systemic evaluation and good test of if the system works or not. This evaluation was appropriate for the context of the work and what the authors were trying to prove. They found the flaws of the system and what the users liked as well.

Discussion:

I think this project is a very interesting work. It has a lot of possibilities for it's future and I think if it can be continued to be improved with better feedback and larger scale implementations, it can be a very useful tool for the audience it is aiming for. The evaluation was appropriate, as this design is still early in the stages. I do think this is a novel idea. There is some related work, but none that does it how the authors in this work do. Finally, I think the pong game would be awesome if it was the size of a room.