When Nikola Tesla predicted that we would have portable phones capable of displaying videos, photos, and more, his idea seemed like a distant dream. Now, almost 100 years later, smartphones are like an additional accessory for many of us.
Digital fabrication engineers are currently working to expand the display capabilities of other everyday objects. One method they are exploring is reprogrammable surfaces, i.e. items that can digitally change their appearance, allowing users to come up with new designs for objects such as walls, mugs and shoes, as well as important information such as health statistics. It helps you.
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the University of California, Berkeley, and Aarhus University have made exciting progress by creating “PortaChrome,” a portable lighting system and design tool that can change the color and texture of a computer. Various objects. Equipped with ultraviolet (UV) and red, green, and blue (RGB) LEDs, the device can be attached to everyday objects such as shirts and headphones. Users can create designs and send them to the PortaChrome device via Bluetooth, where the surface can be programmed into multicolor displays of health data, entertainment and fashion designs.
Creating a reprogrammable item requires coating the object with photochromic dyes, invisible inks that can change to different colors depending on light patterns. Once the coating is complete, individuals can create patterns through the team’s graphic design software and deliver them to the item, or use the team’s API to interact directly with the device and insert data-driven designs. When attached to a surface, PortaChrome’s UV light saturates the dye, while RGB LEDs desaturate the dye, activating the color and adjusting the tone to ensure each pixel matches the intended design.
Zhu and colleagues’ integrated lighting system changes the color of an object in less than four minutes on average, eight times faster than their previous work, “Photo-Chromeleon.” This speedup comes from contacting an object and turning it into a light source that transmits UV and RGB light. Photo-Chromeleon used a projector to activate the color-changing properties of photochromic dyes, which reduce the intensity of light on the surface of an object.
“PortaChrome provides a more convenient way to reprogram your surroundings,” said Yunyi Zhu ’20, MEng ’21, a doctoral student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a CSAIL affiliate, and lead author of a paper on the work. says: “Compared to previous projector-based systems, PortaChrome is a portable light source that can be placed directly on a photochromic surface. This allows the color to change without user intervention and prevents environmental pollution with UV rays. As a result, users can wear a heart rate chart on their shirt after a workout.”
Transforming everyday items
In the demo, PortaChrome displayed health data on a variety of surfaces. Hikers who sewed PortaChrome into their backpacks placed the backpack in direct contact with the back of their shirts, which were coated with photochromic dye. Altitude and heart rate sensors transmitted data to the lighting device, which was then converted into charts through a reprogramming script developed by the researchers. This process created a health visualization on the back of the user’s shirt. In a similar screen, MIT researchers displayed hearts that gradually come together on the back of a tablet to show how users are progressing toward their fitness goals.
PortaChrome has also shown a flair for wearable customization. For example, researchers redesigned some white headphones with blue lines along the sides and yellow and purple stripes horizontally. After coating the headphones with photochromic dye, the team attached the PortaChrome device to the inside of the headphone case. Finally, researchers successfully reprogrammed objects into patterns similar to watercolor art. Researchers also used this process to repaint wrist splints to fit a variety of clothing.
Eventually, this work could be used to digitize consumers’ belongings. Imagine wearing a cape that can change your entire shirt design, or using a car cover to add a new look to your vehicle.
Main Ingredients of PortaChrome
In terms of hardware, PortaChrome is a combination of four main components: Their portable device consists of a fabric base, which is a kind of backbone, a fabric layer with the UV lights soldered on, a fabric layer with the RGB attached, and a silicone diffusion layer on top of that. A translucent honeycomb silicon layer covers the interlaced UV and RGB LEDs and directs them towards individual pixels to properly illuminate the design on the surface.
This device can flexibly wrap objects of various shapes. For tables and other flat surfaces, PortaChrome can be placed on top like a placemat. For curved items such as thermoses, the entire surface can be reprogrammed by wrapping the light source like a coffee mug sleeve.
Portable, flexible lighting systems are fabricated with tools available in the manufacturer’s space (e.g., laser cutters), and the same methods can be replicated with flexible PCB materials and other high-volume manufacturing systems.
Although it is possible to quickly transform the surrounding environment into a dynamic display, Zhu and her colleagues believe that further improvements in speed could be beneficial. They want to use smaller LEDs, which will result in increased light intensity, allowing surfaces to be reprogrammed in seconds for higher resolution designs.
“The surfaces of our everyday objects are encoded with color and visual texture, conveying important information and shaping how we interact,” said Tingyu Cheng, a Georgia Tech postdoctoral researcher who was not involved in the study. “PortaChrome is taking a leap forward by integrating flexible light sources (UV and RGB LEDs) and photochromic pigments into everyday objects to provide reprogrammable surfaces and pixelate the environment with dynamic colors and patterns. The capabilities that PortaChrome demonstrates could revolutionize the way we interact with our surroundings, especially in areas such as personalized fashion and adaptive user interfaces. “This technology enables real-time customization that seamlessly integrates into our daily lives and provides a glimpse into the future of ‘ubiquitous displays.’”
Zhu is joined by nine CSAIL affiliates on the paper: MIT doctoral student and MIT Media Lab affiliate Cedric Honnet. former visiting undergraduate researchers Yixiao Kang, Angelina J. Zheng, and Grace Tang; MIT undergraduate Luca Musk; Junyi Zhu SM ’19, PhD ’24, assistant professor, University of Michigan; Michael Wessely, recent postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at Aarhus University; Lead author Stefanie Mueller is a TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Mechanical Engineering and leader of CSAIL’s HCI Engineering Group.
This work was supported by the MIT-GIST Joint Research Program and was presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technologies in October.
