Pop Up!: a novel technology of shape display of 3D objects

Pop Up! is a novel visual + tactile display for presenting touchable 3D shapes using a pin-rod matrix to convey visual depth information. Due to its dense arrangement and long range of movement, it can display large-scale, dense objects such as human faces, geographical features and architectural structures. The effect is similar to a children’s "Pop up book," where a flat surface transforms into a 3D form. Each pixel is composed of a simple component shown in figure 1. The pin-rod is driven up applying voltage to the actuator, and the pin-rod is driven down by cooling the actuator with an air fan through a slit in each plastic pipe. In addition, the driving method is scalable so that displays of any size can be constructed in the same way.