The World that Feels and Responds: Toward The Next Generation of Physical Computing (Printed Electronics USA 2012)

The rapid advances in new materials and manufacturing techniques are rapidly blending computation and the physical world. With every new turn in technology development, a novel "smart" material, an innovative manufacturing process or a faster microprocessor, there are new and exciting ways to modify our living environments and objects to make them more responsive, intelligent and adaptive. As the world around us is becoming increasingly infused with technology, and as the computer we know disappears into the background, the old, tried-and-tested paradigms for interaction with computers has to be re-evaluated, re-designed and sometimes even discarded to take advantage of new exciting possibilities these emerging technologies provide. While the challenges and opportunities are new, the fundamental goal remains always the same: provide humans with effortless and effective consumption, control and transmission of information at anytime and any place, while delivering unique interaction experiences that are becoming possible with these emerging technologies.

 

In this talk I will then present some of my work that addresses these challenges including investigation of tactile and haptics interfaces, deformable devices, augmented reality and novel touch sensing techniques, biological interfaces, and printed interfaces. The presentation will cover both projects conducted while at Sony Corporation as well as recent research efforts at the Interaction Group at Walt Disney Research, Pittsburgh.

Dr. Ivan Poupyrev directs an Interaction Technology group in Disney Research's Pittsburgh Lab, a unit of Walt Disney Imagineering tasked with dreaming up and developing future technologies for Disney parks, resorts, and cruises. Dr. Poupyrev's group focuses on inventing new interactive technologies for the seamless blending of digital and physical properties in devices, everyday objects, and living environments, a direction he broadly refers to as physical computing. His interests, however, span a broad range of research fields including haptic user interfaces, tangible interfaces, shape-changing and flexible computers, augmented and virtual reality as well as spatial 3D interaction. His research was broadly published and received awards at prestigious academic conferences, exhibited world-wide, widely reported in popular media and released on the market in various consumer products and applications. Prior to Disney, Ivan has worked as a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, Japan. He also had a stint at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington as a Visiting Scientist while working on his Ph.D. dissertation in Hiroshima University, Japan.