Thermotion

We introduce Thermotion, a novel method using thermofluidic composites to design and display thermochromic animation effects on object surfaces. With fluidic channels embedded under the object surfaces, the composites utilize thermofluidic flows to dynamically control the surface temperature as an actuator for thermochromic paints, which enables researchers and designers for the first time to create animations not only on two and three-dimensional surfaces but also on the surface made of a few flexible everyday materials. We report the design space with six animation primitives and two modification effects, and we demonstrate the design and fabrication workflow with a customized software platform for design and simulation. A range of applications is shown leveraging the objects’ dynamic displays both visually and thermally, including dynamic artifacts, teaching aids, and ambient displays. We envision an opportunity to extend thermofluidic composites to other heat-related practices for further dynamic and programmable interactions with temperature.

Achievement:

• Tianyu Yu, Weiye Xu, Haiqing Xu, Guanhong Liu, Chang Liu, Guanyun Wang, and Haipeng Mi. 2023. Thermotion: Design and Fabrication of Thermofluidic Composites for Animation Effects on Object Surfaces. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 19 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580743

• Tianyu Yu, Weiye Xu, Haiqing Xu, Guanhong Liu, Chang Liu, Guanyun Wang, and Haipeng Mi. 2023. Demonstrating Thermotion: Design and Fabrication of Thermofluidic Composites for Animation Effects on Object Surfaces. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3583907