Development of Actuated Tangible User Interfaces: New Interaction Concepts and Evaluation Methods

Making information understandable and literally graspable is the main goal of tangible interaction research. By giving digital data physical representations (Tangible User Interface Objects, or TUIOs), they can be used and manipulated like everyday objects with the users’ natural manipulation skills. Such physical interaction is basically of uni-directional kind, directed from the user to the system, limiting the possible interaction patterns. In other words, the system has no means to actively support the physical interaction. Within the frame of tabletop tangible user interfaces, this problem was addressed by the introduction of actuated TUIOs, that are controllable by the system. In this thesis, we present the development of our own actuated TUIOs and address multiple interaction concepts we identified as research gaps in literature on actuated Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs).