ForceTile: tabletop tangible interface with vision-based force distribution sensing

Today, placing physical objects on a tabletop display is common for intuitive tangible input [Ullmer and Ishii 1997]. The overall goal of our project is to increase the interactivity of tabletop tangible interfaces. To achieve this goal, we propose a novel tabletop tangible interface named ‘ForceTile.’ This interface can detect the force distribution on its surface as well as its position, rotation and ID by using a vision-based approach. In our previous optical force sensors “GelForce” [Kamiyama et al. 2004], an elastic body and cameras are fixed together. Contrarily, on this system, users can place and move multiple tile-shaped interfaces on the tabletop display freely. Furthermore, users can interact with projected images on the tabletop screen by moving, pushing or pinching the ForceTiles.