Exploratorium After Dark: Tactile - Demonstrations and Talk

Every Thursday night, the Exploratorium holds the After Dark event where people come to the museum in the evening for themed interactive exhibits. We were invited to come and brought along three demos from our lab that showed different aspects of touch including a shape-shifting haptic display, visio-haptic VR illusion, and tabletop swarm robots. Additionally, Prof. Sean Follmer gave a talk on embodied engagement in the virtual world with a focus on haptic technologies.

the shape shift pin display is on the left of the image and on the right a computer screen displays the environment that can be felt on the device

one person in a VR headset reaches out to touch a box while several others observe on a large screen what the user is seeing in VR

four people around a table interacting with a small swarm of robots

prof. follmer stands at a podium with arm extended to describe slides on the shape display, below people in the audience are watching