A tactile luminous floor for an interactive autonomous space

This paper describes the interactive tactile luminous floor that was constructed and used as the skin of the playful interactive space Ada, which ran as a public exhibit for five months in 2002 and had over 550,000 visitors. Ada's floor was custom-built to provide a means for individual and collective user interaction. It consists of 360 hexagonal 66 cm tiles covering a total area of 136 m^2, each with analogue tactile load sensors based on force-sensitive resistors and dimmable neon red, green and blue (RGB) lamps. The tiles are constructed from extruded aluminum with glass tops. An Interbus factory automation bus senses and controls the tiles. Software is described for rendering fluid, dynamic visual effects on the floor, for signal processing of the load information, for real-time visitor tracking and for a variety of behavioural modes, games and interactions. Data from single tiles and from tracking are shown. This floor offers new modalities of human-computer interaction and human-robot interaction for autonomous robotic spaces.