Shape-Changing Displays you can Touch and Feel: GHOST (Generic, Highly-Organic Shape-Changing Interfaces)

EU-supported research project designed to tap humans’ ability to reason about and manipulate physical objects through the interfaces of computers and mobile devices. ‘This will have all sorts of implications for the future, from everyday interaction with mobile phones to learning with computers and design work,’ … ‘It’s not only about deforming the shape of the screen, but also the digital object you want to manipulate, maybe even in mid-air. Through ultrasound levitation tech, eg we can project the display out of the flat screen. And thanks to deformable screens we can plunge our fingers into it.’

This breakthrough in user interaction with tech allows us to handle objects, data, in a completely new way. A surgeon, for instance, will be able to work on a virtual brain physically, with the full tactile experience, before performing a real-life operation. Designers and artists using physical proxies such as clay can mould and remould objects and store them in the computer as they work. GHOST researchers are also working with deformable interfaces such as pads and sponges for musicians to flex to control timbre, speed and other parameters in electronic music.

Prototypes: ‘Emerge’ is one which allows data in bar charts to be pulled out of the screen by fingertips. The information, whether it’s election results or rainfall patterns, can then be re-ordered and broken down by column, row or individually, in order to visualise it better.

‘Morphees’, flexible mobile devices with lycra or alloy displays which bend and stretch according to use. These can change shape automatically to form screens to shield your fingers when you type in a pincode, for example, or to move the display to the twists and turns of a game. And such devices can be enlarged in the hand to examine data closer and shrunk again for storing away in a case or pocket.

One of the GHOST partners, the University of Bristol has a startup UltraHaptics, to develop tech that uses ultrasound to create feeling in mid-air. ‘Displays which change shape as you are using them are probably only 5 yrs off now. If you want your smartphone to project the landscape of a terrain 20 or 30 cm out of the display, that’s a little further off – but we’re working on it!’ http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/167038_en.html