research-article

Open access

NFCStack: Identifiable Physical Building Blocks that Support Concurrent Construction and Frictionless Interaction

Authors:

Rong-Hao Liang,

Ling-Chien Yang,

Chi-Huan Chiang,

Bing-Yu ChenAuthors Info & Claims

UIST '22: Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

Article No.: 26, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3526113.3545658

Published: 28 October 2022 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

In this paper, we propose NFCStack, which is a physical building block system that supports stacking and frictionless interaction and is based on near-field communication (NFC). This system consists of a portable station that can support and resolve the order of three types of passive identifiable stackable: bricks, boxes, and adapters. The bricks support stable and sturdy physical construction, whereas the boxes support frictionless tangible interactions. The adapters provide an interface between the aforementioned two types of stackable and convert the top of a stack into a terminal for detecting interactions between NFC-tagged objects. In contrast to existing systems based on NFC or radio-frequency identification technologies, NFCStack is portable, supports simultaneous interactions, and resolves stacking and interaction events responsively, even when objects are not strictly aligned. Evaluation results indicate that the proposed system effectively supports 12 layers of rich-ID stacking with the three types of building block, even if every box is stacked with a 6-mm offset. The results also indicate possible generalized applications of the proposed system, including 2.5-dimensional construction. The interaction styles are described using several educational application examples, and the design implications of this research are explained.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (video.mp4)

Supplemental video

Download
38.51 MB

References

[1]

Robert Aish, James L. Frankel, John H. Frazer, and Anthony T. Patera. 2001. Computational Construction Kits for Geometric Modeling and Design (Panel Abstract). In Proceedings of the 2001 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics(I3D ’01). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 125–128. https://doi.org/10.1145/364338.364379

Digital Library

[2]

Roslyn R Aish. 1981. Modelling arrangements. US Patent 4,275,449.

[3]

David Anderson, James L. Frankel, Joe Marks, Darren Leigh, Eddie Sullivan, Jonathan Yedidia, and Kathy Ryall. 1999. Building Virtual Structures with Physical Blocks. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Asheville, North Carolina, USA) (UIST ’99). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 71–72. https://doi.org/10.1145/320719.322587

Digital Library

[4]

Masahiro Ando, Yuichi Itoh, Toshiki Hosoi, Kazuki Takashima, Kosuke Nakajima, and Yoshifumi Kitamura. 2014. StackBlock: Block-shaped Interface for Flexible Stacking. In Proceedings of the Adjunct Publication of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA) (UIST’14 Adjunct). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 41–42. https://doi.org/10.1145/2658779.2659104

Digital Library

[5]

Daniel Avrahami and Scott E. Hudson. 2002. Forming Interactivity: A Tool for Rapid Prototyping of Physical Interactive Products. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (London, England) (DIS ’02). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1145/778712.778735

Digital Library

[6]

Maribeth Back, Jonathan Cohen, Rich Gold, Steve Harrison, and Scott Minneman. 2001. Listen Reader: An Electronically Augmented Paper-Based Book. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seattle, Washington, USA) (CHI ’01). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 23–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/365024.365031

Digital Library

[7]

Tom Bartindale and Chris Harrison. 2009. Stacks on the Surface: Resolving Physical Order Using Fiducial Markers with Structured Transparency. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (Banff, Alberta, Canada) (ITS ’09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 57–60. https://doi.org/10.1145/1731903.1731916

Digital Library

[8]

Patrick Baudisch, Torsten Becker, and Frederik Rudeck. 2010. Lumino: Tangible Blocks for Tabletop Computers Based on Glass Fiber Bundles. In ACM CHI 2010 Conference Proceedings (Atlanta, Georgia, USA). 1165–1174.

[9]

Liwei Chan, Stefanie Müller, Anne Roudaut, and Patrick Baudisch. 2012. CapStones and ZebraWidgets: Sensing Stacks of Building Blocks, Dials and Sliders on Capacitive Touch Screens. In ACM CHI 2012 Conference Proceedings (Austin, Texas, USA). 2189–2192.

[10]

Klaus Finkenzeller. 2003. RFID Handbook: Fundamentals and Applications in Contactless Smart Cards and Identification(2nd ed.). Wiley Publishing.

[11]

Baptiste Garnier, Philippe Mariage, François Rault, Cédric Cochrane, and Vladan Koncar. 2021. Electronic-components less fully textile multiple resonant combiners for body-centric near field communication. Scientific Reports 11, 1 (25 Jan 2021), 2159. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81246-z

[12]

Audrey Girouard, Aneesh Tarun, and Roel Vertegaal. 2012. DisplayStacks: Interaction Techniques for Stacks of Flexible Thin-film Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Austin, Texas, USA) (CHI ’12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2431–2440. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208406

Digital Library

[13]

Alix Goguey, Cameron Steer, Andrés Lucero, Laurence Nigay, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo, Céline Coutrix, Anne Roudaut, Sriram Subramanian, Yutaka Tokuda, Timothy Neate, Jennifer Pearson, Simon Robinson, and Matt Jones. 2019. PickCells: A Physically Reconfigurable Cell-composed Touchscreen. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Glasgow, Scotland Uk) (CHI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 273, 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300503

Digital Library

[14]

Matthew G. Gorbet, Maggie Orth, and Hiroshi Ishii. 1998. Triangles: Tangible Interface for Manipulation and Exploration of Digital Information Topography. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Los Angeles, California, USA) (CHI ’98). ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., USA, 49–56. https://doi.org/10.1145/274644.274652

Digital Library

[15]

Jason T. Griffin, Steven Henry Fyke, Christopher Lyle Bender, Santiago Carbonell Duque, David Ryan Walker, and Jerome Pasquero. 2014. Near-field communication (NFC) system providing mobile wireless communications device operations based upon timing and sequence of NFC sensor communication and related methods. U.S. Patent 8,670,709.

[16]

Toshiki Hosoi, Kazuki Takashima, Tomoaki Adachi, Yuichi Itoh, and Yoshifumi Kitamura. 2014. A-blocks: Recognizing and Assessing Child Building Processes During Play with Toy Blocks. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 Emerging Technologies (Shenzhen, China) (SA ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 1, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2669047.2669061

Digital Library

[17]

Meng-Ju Hsieh, Rong-Hao Liang, Da-Yuan Huang, Jheng-You Ke, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2018. RFIBricks: Interactive Building Blocks Based on RFID. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173763

Digital Library

[18]

Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer. 1997. Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI ’97). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 234–241. https://doi.org/10.1145/258549.258715

Digital Library

[19]

Robert J.K. Jacob, Audrey Girouard, Leanne M. Hirshfield, Michael S. Horn, Orit Shaer, Erin Treacy Solovey, and Jamie Zigelbaum. 2008. Reality-Based Interaction: A Framework for Post-WIMP Interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy) (CHI ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 201–210. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357089

Digital Library

[20]

Yoshifumi Kitamura, Yuichi Itoh, and Fumio Kishino. 2001. Real-Time 3D Interaction with ActiveCube. In CHI ’01 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seattle, Washington) (CHI EA ’01). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 355–356. https://doi.org/10.1145/634067.634277

Digital Library

[21]

Jinha Lee, Yasuaki Kakehi, and Takeshi Naemura. 2009. Bloxels: Glowing Blocks as Volumetric Pixels. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 Emerging Technologies (New Orleans, Louisiana) (SIGGRAPH ’09). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 1 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1597956.1597961

Digital Library

[22]

Jakob Leitner and Michael Haller. 2011. Geckos: Combining Magnets and Pressure Images to Enable New Tangible-object Design and Interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vancouver, BC, Canada) (CHI ’11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2985–2994. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979385

Digital Library

[23]

Hanchuan Li, Eric Brockmeyer, Elizabeth J. Carter, Josh Fromm, Scott E. Hudson, Shwetak N. Patel, and Alanson Sample. 2016. PaperID: A Technique for Drawing Functional Battery-Free Wireless Interfaces on Paper. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA) (CHI ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 5885–5896. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858249

Digital Library

[24]

Rong-Hao Liang, Liwei Chan, Hung-Yu Tseng, Han-Chih Kuo, Da-Yuan Huang, De-Nian Yang, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2014. GaussBricks: Magnetic Building Blocks for Constructive Tangible Interactions on Portable Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) (CHI ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3153–3162. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557105

Digital Library

[25]

Rong-Hao Liang and Zengrong Guo. 2021. NFCSense: Data-Defined Rich-ID Motion Sensing for Fluent Tangible Interaction Using a Commodity NFC Reader. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445214

Digital Library

[26]

Rong-Hao Liang, Meng-Ju Hsieh, Jheng-You Ke, Jr-Ling Guo, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2018. RFIMatch: Distributed Batteryless Near-Field Identification Using RFID-Tagged Magnet-Biased Reed Switches. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Berlin, Germany) (UIST ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 473–483. https://doi.org/10.1145/3242587.3242620

Digital Library

[27]

Rong-Hao Liang, Han-Chih Kuo, Liwei Chan, De-Nian Yang, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2014. GaussStones: Shielded Magnetic Tangibles for Multi-Token Interactions on Portable Displays. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA) (UIST ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 365–372. https://doi.org/10.1145/2642918.2647384

Digital Library

[28]

Rongzhou Lin, Han-Joon Kim, Sippanat Achavananthadith, Selman A. Kurt, Shawn C. C. Tan, Haicheng Yao, Benjamin C. K. Tee, Jason K. W. Lee, and John S. Ho. 2020. Wireless battery-free body sensor networks using near-field-enabled clothing. Nature Communications 11, 1 (23 Jan 2020), 444. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14311-2

[29]

Chin-Yuan Lu, Han-Wei Hsieh, Rong-Hao Liang, Chi-Jung Lee, Ling-Chien Yang, Mengru Xue, Jr-Ling Guo, Meng-Ju Hsieh, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2021. Combining Touchscreens with Passive Rich-ID Building Blocks to Support Context Construction in Touchscreen Interactions. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445722

Digital Library

[30]

Thomas W. Malone. 1983. How Do People Organize Their Desks?: Implications for the Design of Office Information Systems. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 1, 1 (Jan. 1983), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1145/357423.357430

Digital Library

[31]

Einar Sneve Martinussen and Timo Arnall. 2009. Designing with RFID. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (Cambridge, United Kingdom) (TEI ’09). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 343–350. https://doi.org/10.1145/1517664.1517734

Digital Library

[32]

Timothy S McNerney. 2004. From turtles to Tangible Programming Bricks: explorations in physical language design. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8, 5 (2004), 326–337.

[33]

David Merrill, Jeevan Kalanithi, and Pattie Maes. 2007. Siftables: Towards Sensor Network User Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) (TEI ’07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 75–78. https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226984

Digital Library

[34]

Farshid Salemi Parizi, Eric Whitmire, and Shwetak Patel. 2019. AuraRing: Precise Electromagnetic Finger Tracking. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 3, 4, Article 150 (dec 2019), 28 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3369831

Digital Library

[35]

Amanda Parkes and Hiroshi Ishii. 2010. Bosu: A Physical Programmable Design Tool for Transformability with Soft Mechanics. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (Aarhus, Denmark) (DIS ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 189–198. https://doi.org/10.1145/1858171.1858205

Digital Library

[36]

Florian Perteneder, Kathrin Probst, Joanne Leong, Sebastian Gassler, Christian Rendl, Patrick Parzer, Katharina Fluch, Sophie Gahleitner, Sean Follmer, Hideki Koike, and Michael Haller. 2020. Foxels: Build Your Own Smart Furniture. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (Sydney NSW, Australia) (TEI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 111–122. https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3374935

Digital Library

[37]

Hayes Solos Raffle, Amanda J. Parkes, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2004. Topobo: A Constructive Assembly System with Kinetic Memory. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 647–654. https://doi.org/10.1145/985692.985774

Digital Library

[38]

Jun Rekimoto, Brygg Ullmer, and Haruo Oba. 2001. DataTiles: A Modular Platform for Mixed Physical and Graphical Interactions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seattle, Washington, USA) (CHI ’01). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 269–276. https://doi.org/10.1145/365024.365115

Digital Library

[39]

Ryo Takahashi, Masaaki Fukumoto, Changyo Han, Takuya Sasatani, Yoshiaki Narusue, and Yoshihiro Kawahara. 2020. TelemetRing: A Batteryless and Wireless Ring-Shaped Keyboard Using Passive Inductive Telemetry. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1161–1168. https://doi.org/10.1145/3379337.3415873

Digital Library

[40]

Brygg Ullmer, Hiroshi Ishii, and Robert J. K. Jacob. 2005. Token+constraint Systems for Tangible Interaction with Digital Information. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 12, 1 (March 2005), 81–118. https://doi.org/10.1145/1057237.1057242

Digital Library

[41]

Nicolas Villar, Daniel Cletheroe, Greg Saul, Christian Holz, Tim Regan, Oscar Salandin, Misha Sra, Hui-Shyong Yeo, William Field, and Haiyan Zhang. 2018. Project Zanzibar: A Portable and Flexible Tangible Interaction Platform. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 515, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174089

Digital Library

[42]

Huizhong Ye, Chi-Jung Lee, Te-Yen Wu, Xing-Dong Yang, Bing-Yu Chen, and Rong-Hao Liang. 2022. Body-Centric NFC: Body-Centric Interaction with NFC Devices Through Near-Field Enabled Clothing. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (Virtual Event, Australia) (DIS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1626–1639. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3534569

Digital Library

[43]

Hui-Shyong Yeo, Ryosuke Minami, Kirill Rodriguez, George Shaker, and Aaron Quigley. 2018. Exploring Tangible Interactions with Radar Sensing. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 2, 4, Article 200 (dec 2018), 25 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287078

Digital Library

[44]

Oren Zuckerman, Saeed Arida, and Mitchel Resnick. 2005. Extending Tangible Interfaces for Education: Digital Montessori-Inspired Manipulatives. CHI 2005: Technology, Safety, Community: Conference Proceedings - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/1054972.1055093

Digital Library

Cited By

Chiang CChen BLiang R(2024)Efficient Fabrication Workflow for NFC-Based Identifiable Building BlocksAdjunct Proceedings of the 9th ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication10.1145/3665662.3673264(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665662.3673264
Dominiak JWalczak AStefanidi EAdamkiewicz KGrudzień KNiess JWoźniak P(2024)ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data PhysicalizationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661573(476-495)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661573

Index Terms

NFCStack: Identifiable Physical Building Blocks that Support Concurrent Construction and Frictionless Interaction
1. Human-centered computing

Recommendations

Combining Touchscreens with Passive Rich-ID Building Blocks to Support Context Construction in Touchscreen Interactions
CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

This research investigates the design space of combining touchscreens with passive rich-ID building block systems to support the physical construction of contexts in touchscreen interactions. With two proof-of-concept systems, RFIPillars and RFITiles, ...
Comparing Tangible and Multi-touch Interaction for Interactive Data Visualization Tasks
TEI '16: Proceedings of the TEI '16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

Interactive visualization plays a key role in the analysis of large datasets. It can help users to explore data, investigate hypotheses and find patterns. The easier and more tangible the interaction, the more likely it is to enhance understanding. This ...
Spatially aware tangible display interaction in a tabletop environment
ITS '12: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM international conference on Interactive tabletops and surfaces

One limiting factor of digital tabletops is that interaction is usually restricted to a single 2D surface. I propose to extend this interaction space to the 3D space above the table by using spatially aware handheld displays. Utilizing the spatial ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UIST '22: Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

October 2022

1363 pages

ISBN:9781450393201

DOI:10.1145/3526113

Editors:
Maneesh Agrawala
Stanford University, USA
,
Jacob O. Wobbrock
University of Washington, USA
,
Eytan Adar
University of Michigan, USA
,
Vidya Setlur
Tableau Research, USA

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 October 2022

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

UIST '22

Sponsor:

UIST '22: The 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

October 29 - November 2, 2022

OR, Bend, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 842 of 3,967 submissions, 21%

Upcoming Conference

UIST '24

Sponsor:
sigchi
sigchi

The 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

October 13 - 16, 2024

Pittsburgh , PA , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
809
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)404
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)70

Reflects downloads up to 12 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Chiang CChen BLiang R(2024)Efficient Fabrication Workflow for NFC-Based Identifiable Building BlocksAdjunct Proceedings of the 9th ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication10.1145/3665662.3673264(1-3)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665662.3673264
Dominiak JWalczak AStefanidi EAdamkiewicz KGrudzień KNiess JWoźniak P(2024)ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data PhysicalizationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661573(476-495)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661573

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents