Articulev: An integrated self-assembly pipeline for articulated multi-bead levitation primitives

Abstract

Acoustic levitation is gaining popularity as an approach to create physicalized mid-air content by levitating diferent types of levitation primitives. Such primitives can be independent particles or particles that are physically connected via threads or pieces of cloth to form shapes in mid-air. However, initialization (i.e., placement of such primitives in their mid-air target locations) currently relies on either manual placement or specialized ad-hoc implementations, which limits their practical usage. We present ArticuLev, an integrated pipeline that deals with the identifcation, assembly and mid-air placement of levitated shape primitives. We designed ArticuLev with the physical properties of commonly used levitation primitives in mind. It enables experiences that seamlessly combine diferent primitives into meaningful structures (including fully articulated animated shapes) and supports various levitation display approaches (e.g., particles moving at high speed). In this paper, we describe our pipeline and demonstrate it with heterogeneous combinations of levitation primitives.