Affordance++: the tale of animating IoT objects

cars [3], smart homes, sensor networks, and wearables. This list would endlessly go on as more and more objects are embedded with required IoT components: a sensor, a battery, a microprocessor, and a (usually wireless) transmission modem. The next time you are bored, play this game: Find the closest IoT device next to you and spot the components. Your Wi-Fi controlled coffee machine has them all, and yes, it is a real IoT device [4]. Many people have written lovely tales around IoT enabled houses and IoT daily interactions [5]. These stories usually feature ghost-like devices that act upon your environment, such as “smart” thermostats that talk to your smartphone, “smart” doors that open only to you (or to your digital-self, whose identity is an encrypted RFID pocket card), and a “smart” refrigerator that texts you when you are out of soy milk. There is so much “smart” around us, yet most of us are not that excited about Wi-Fi coffee machines or smartphonecontrolled thermostats. Where’s this missing “smartness” that would really change our experience? What do these devices do for us, really? There is a split in IoT: Some devices are hidden as they sample and report the world to us, while others are exposed to our interaction possibilities. Let’s take the example of those 23 million IoT enabled cars [3]. You can find these devices inside a contemporary car in different fashions: voice-activated systems, navigation systems (interfaces to Google Maps, etc.), and the hidden workers, such as mechanical health sensors that communicate and report to your mechanic—you name it. It seems IoT vendors, tech makers, researchers, and so forth focus solely on sensing and communications. Why is that? Well, that happens because most everyday objects cannot be easily augmented with actuators. While having a sensor that counts how many sips of coffee you had can probably work with a tiny-tiny ATMEGA processor and a low-powered last generation Bluetooth modem running on a coin cell battery, it is unlikely the coffee cup can run away when you have too many sips as a reminder that you drank too much coffee. So why can’t the coffee cup be animated? This vision does not happen because adding a motor to it would not work with such a tiny battery. However, we do think that would be an interesting means of expression, both for the coffee mug and for your own experience. Some researchers have explored the notion of animating real objects at the expense of one-off art pieces like a water faucet that curls up and plays with you [6] or a sofa that changes shape as you sit on it [7], etc. But to bring that to all the devices in your household would mean a lot of batteries, a lot of motors, and a lot of actuators. This Affordance++: The tale of animating IoT objects By Patrik Jonell and Pedro Lopes