Coming soon - How to build a Soma Inflatable Bit
Background
The Soma Bits are a very basic set of actuators (read: something that can vibrate, heat up or expand/contract) based on the arduino platform. With them you can explore how vibration, heat and inflatables feel without having to focus on the technical stuff. They have a very simple interface on purpose and also simple approach on how to build them. They are designed to be usable after they are built and for newcomers to explore how they work on three levels:
- How interactive technology (in this case vibration, heat and inflatables) feels and use it without having to know how it works (intially).
- How the Soma Bits and therefore interactive technology works by looking at its commpenents.
- Build a Soma Bit yourself to understand the technical side of it.
We wrote a research paper about it. If you’d like to have a bit more background and reasoning about it, have a look: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3533510