Fiber – a primitive yet ubiquitous form of material – intertwines with our bodies and surroundings, from constructing our fibrous muscles that enable our movement, to forming fabrics that intimately interface with our skin. In soft robotics and advanced materials science research, actuated fibers are gaining interest as thin, flexible materials that can morph in response to external stimuli. In this paper, we build on fluidic artificial muscles research to develop OmniFiber - a soft, line-based material system for designing movement-based interactions. We devised actuated thin (øouter < 1.8 mm) fluidic fibers with integrated soft sensors that exhibit perceivably strong forces, up to 19 N at 0.5 MPa, and a high speed of linear actuation peaking at 150mm/s. These allow to flexibly weave them into everyday tangible interactions; including on-body haptic devices for embodied learning, synchronized tangible interfaces for remote communication, and robotic crafting for expressivity. The design of such interactive capabilities is supported by OmniFiber’s design space, accessible fabrication pipeline, and a fluidic I/O control system to bring omni-functional fluidic fibers to the HCI toolbox of interactive morphing materials.

Venous Materials is a novel concept and approach of an interactive material utilizing fluidic channels. We present a design method for fluidic mechanisms that respond to deformation by mechanical inputs from the user, such as pressure and bending. We designed a set of primitive venous structures that act as embedded analog fluidic sensors, displaying flow and color change. In this paper, we consider the fluid as the medium to drive tangible information triggered by deformation, and at the same time, to function as a responsive display of that information. To provide users with a simple way to create and validate designs of fluidic structures, we built a software platform and design tool UI. This design tool allows users to quickly design the geometry, and simulate the flow with intended mechanical force dynamically. We present a range of applications that demonstrate how Venous Materials can be utilized to augment interactivity of everyday physical objects.

In this hands-on studio we introduce a method of designing and prototyping fluidic mechanisms that utilize the flow as both deformation sensors and displays. A fabrication process and the featured materials will be provided to allow participants to design and prototype self-contained fluidic channels. These channels are designed to respond to mechanical inputs such as deformation and pressure with flow and color change. We will introduce a specialized software plugin for design and flow simulation that enables simple and rapid modelling with optimization of the fluidic mechanism. The goal of this studio is to provide researchers, designers and makers with hand-on experience in designing fluidic mechanisms, coupling shape-change (i.e. deformation input) with displayed response. Our method allows participants to explore meaningful applications such as on-body wearable devices for augmenting motion and animating objects such as interactive books, lampshades and packaging.