milliMorph -- Fluid-Driven Thin Film Shape-Change Materials for Interaction Design

Abstract

This paper presents a design space, a fabrication system and applications of creating fluidic chambers and channels at millimeter scale for tangible actuated interfaces. The ability to design and fabricate millifluidic chambers allows one to create high frequency actuation, sequential control of flows and high resolution design on thin film materials. We propose a four dimensional design space of creating these fluidic chambers, a novel heat sealing system that enables easy and precise millifluidics fabrication, and application demonstrations of the fabricated materials for haptics, ambient devices and robotics. As shape-change materials are increasingly integrated in designing novel interfaces, milliMorph enriches the library of fluid-driven shape-change materials, and demonstrates new design opportunities that is unique at millimeter scale for product and interaction design.