MagneSwift: Low-Cost, Interactive Shape Display Leveraging Magnetic Materials

Pin-based shape displays present shapes and motion by moving arrays of pins. However, using many linear actuators to achieve this inevitably increases the size and cost of the device. MagneShape instead uses magnetic force to control the levitation height of passive magnetic pins to display shape and motion. While it is simple and inexpensive, MagneShape offers only limited interactivity. Since a certain distance has to be maintained between the magnetic pins to avoid magnetic interference arising between them, MagneShape requires appropriate magnetic patterns and time-consuming magnetization processes to display characters properly. To address this limitation, we improved the configuration of the magnetic pins and developed MagneSwift, a magnetic belt conveyor system with a high-density pin array. When a hand-drawn magnetic pattern is conveyed under the high-density pin array, the drawn pattern is presented on the pin array. We also demonstrate several interactive applications and discuss future possibilities.