TuVe: a flexible display with a tube

Ordinary displays, e.g., liquid crystal displays (LCD), can only provide two-dimensional information. Expressions and interactions with such displays are limited to the surface. On the other hand, many research studies on novel display systems have been proposed to tackle such limitations and provide three-dimensional information. A display system made up of a tube with fluids could be one of the solutions. A tube with fluids inside of it can take various forms according to the environment, therefore making it possible to project information onto various surface shapes. Dietz et al. proposed a kit for prototyping of user interfaces with fluids[Dietz 2014]. They discussed components e.g. pumps, tubes, and accessories for tubing for users can constitute fluidic user interfaces easily. Popp proposed an art piece, "bit.flow" [Popp 2011], which consists of several tubes, two-phase flows inside of them, and pumps that control the flows for each tube. However, there is no discussion about changing the control method according to the tube taking various shapes. In this case, information could only be presented in a known simple shape, and users cannot change the shape of the surface. In order to tackle these issues, we propose a novel tube display TuVe , that consists of a tube and fluids, while offering a dynamical shape-changing display with computer vision based calibration.