No special sensing surface or cameras are needed

storyboard: a grouping gesture

assembling siftables

exploded view of a single siftable

Siftables:
Imagine overturning a container of nuts and bolts, then looking through the resulting pile for a particular item. Or spreading photographs out on a tabletop and then beginning to sort them into piles. During these activities we interact with large numbers of small objects at the same time, and they utilize all of our fingers and both hands together. We humans are skilled at using our hands in these ways, and can effortlessly sift and sort - focusing on our higher level goals rather than the items themselves.

Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives. As an interaction platform, Siftables applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces. Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables can be used to implement any number of gestural interaction languages and HCI applications.

The Siftables interaction platform is a collaboration with Jeevan Kalanithi.

Publications

D. Merrill, J. Kalanithi and P. Maes. Siftables: Towards Sensor Network User Interfaces. In the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI'07). February 15-17 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.

• 20MHz AVR processor
• full-color OLED display
• short-range infrared communication in 4 directions
• 3-axis accelerometer
• Bluetooth radio
• flash memory
• rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
• tactile/haptic actuation driver circuit
• expansion ports for adding extra sensors, actuators.
• C API for event-driven programming on-siftable
• ASCII language for remote software control over wireless

Jeevan Kalanithi - co-inventor, co-developer

Pattie Maes - advisor, brainstormer, supporter

Amit Zoran - case design

Paula Aguilera - video production

Drew Shapiro - server design / development

Evan Broder - firmware hacking, including flash memory, OLED, animation, and 'attentionables' implementation

Orit Zuckerman, Sajid Sadi - created original 'attention' piece that became 'attentionables' demo