inFORM : A Giant leap at Virtual Reality

Ever felt an urge to slap your friend but couldn’t as they are far away. Well now that dream is about to come true.

inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display which is being developed by Tangible Media Group which is a part of MIT Media Labs, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii. inFORM can render 3D content physically so users can interact with digital information. Also it can interact with physical world for example moving certain things on table.

Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. With Oculus and Project Morpheus the market of Virtual Reality is already quite hot and inFORM takes it to a whole new level. It means you an play with your friend a game of chess even when sitting in different countries. So while you are having a VR walkthrough in the park, the inFORM surface can simulate its surface in accordance to where you are in your VR world, you can feel different surface like grass, rocks maybe river. Now that would be truley impressive experience.

The technology behind inFORM is inspired by the pin screens which are used for animation purposes. Each block in inFORM is connected to a motor and controlled by a laptop. Using the inputs you can not only move the pins to render digital content physically, but can also register real-life objects interacting with its surface , for which they have hacked the Microsoft Kinect.

Maybe we are closer than we think in terms of interacting with real world atoms instead of digital pixels. We are back into the physical world; the circle seems to be complete.

...