Publications

- Academic (ACM UIST 2021)

- MIT News

- HACKADAY

Principle

The conductive cell walls of MetaSense objects act as capacitance sensors to detect user interaction. In the following figure, a Metasense joystick is shown in (a) original state and (b,c) deformed states during user interaction with capacitance changes of conductive shear cells detected accordingly.


Visualizing Capacitance Variation:


Repo used to drive the capacitive sensing board:

https://github.com/mitmedialab/TI_EVM_logger

Characterization

We printed multiple sizes of the "fundamental sensing cells" and characterized their capacitance VS compression:

The results allow visualizing that we reached the limits of our capacitive sensing board (1pF) with the 5mm cells:

Simulation

The editor allows visualizing simulated deformation, to predict the best position of the capacitive sensing cells:

Designs & Fabrications

Here is a step by step example, creating a model in the MetaSense 3D editor:
(a,b): adding non-conductive, structural cells;
(c,d) converting structural cells to conductive cells using the edit tool.

=> Printing result:

Filaments used: NinjaFlex TPU + Electrifi Conductive Filament

3d printer used:  FlashForge Creator Pro 2.

Applications


A musical controller !?

A 3d printed accelerometer!?

A joystick to play PacMan !?