Tokuda, Yutaka, Berna Moya, Jose Luis, Memoli, Gianluca, Neate, Timothy, Sahoo, Deepak Ranjan, Robinson, Simon, Pearson, Jennifer, Jones, Matt and Subramanian, Sriram (2017) Programmable liquid matter: 2D shape drawing of liquid metals by dynamic electric field. 2017 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, Brighton, United Kingdom, 17-20 October 2017. Published in: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces. 454-457. ACM, New York, NY, USA. ISBN 9781450346917

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Abstract

We present a programmable liquid matter which can dynamically transform its 2D shape into a variety of forms and present unique organic animations based on spatio-temporally controlled electric fields. We deployed a EGaIn (Gallium indium eutectic alloy) liquid metal as our smart liquid material since it features a superior electric conductivity in spite of a liquid state and presents a high dynamic range of surface tension and 2D area controlled by applied voltage strength and polarity. Our proposed liquid metal shape and motion control algorithms with dynamically patterned electric fields realize path tracing organic animation. We demonstrate an interactive 7x7 electrode array control system with a computer vision based GUI system to enable novice users to physically draw alphabet letters and 2D shapes by unique animatronics of liquid metals.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Keywords:	Animatronics, Blob Animation, Electric Field, Gallium, Liquid metal, Marangoni Effect, Programmable Matter, Shape Changing Display, Smart Material
Schools and Departments:	School of Engineering and Informatics > Informatics
Research Centres and Groups:	Creative Technology
Depositing User:	Gianluca Memoli
Date Deposited:	02 Jan 2018 11:26
Last Modified:	10 Jan 2018 13:31
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/72502

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