HERMITS: Mechanical Shells for Reconfigurable Robotic Tangible Interfaces

HERMITS explores a way to greatly advance the versatility of Robotic Tangible Interfaces. Inspired by hermit crabs, researchers in the Tangible Media group at the Media Lab (Ken Nakagaki, Joanne Leong, Jordan L. Tappa, Joao Wilbert, and Hiroshi Ishii) designed a modular system for table-top wheeled robots to dock to passive attachment modules, defined as "mechanical shells." Different types of mechanical shells can uniquely extend and convert the motion of robots with embedded mechanisms, so that, as a whole architecture, the system can offer a variety of interactive functionality by self-reconfiguration. We envision this novel interactive architecture to bring a rich application space including physical space organization, digital data physicalization, and entertainment and storytelling systems.
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