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Flowcuits: Crafting Tangible and Interactive Electrical Components withLiquid Metal Circuits

Tokuda, Y; Ranjan Sahoo, D; Jones, M; Withana, A; Subramanian, S; (2021) Flowcuits: Crafting Tangible and Interactive Electrical Components withLiquid Metal Circuits. In: TEI '21: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. (pp. p. 35). ACM: Association for Computing Machinery: New York, USA. Green open access

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Abstract

We present Flowcuits, a DIY fabrication method to prototype tangible, interactive and functional electrical components by manipulating liquid metals. The prototypes afford both physical and visual interactions to demonstrate the inner working mechanics of fundamental electronic elements, which enables tangible and playful learning. The fabrication process follows simple imprinting and sealing of fluidic circuits with a 3D-printed stamp on an accessible moldable-substrates such as `Blu Tack'. Utilizing conductive gallium indium liquid metal, we demonstrated interactive and re-configurable electronic components such as switches, variable resistors, variable capacitors, logic gates and pressure sensors. In this paper, we present the design analogy of Flowcuits, DIY fabrication approach including a parametric 3D stamp design toolkit and results from a technical evaluation. The stamps are printed with a low-cost 3D printer and all the materials are inexpensive and reusable, enabling Flowcuits to be easily used without any advanced lab facilities.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Flowcuits: Crafting Tangible and Interactive Electrical Components withLiquid Metal Circuits
Event: Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Dates: 14 February 2021 - 17 February 2021
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1145/1122445.1122456
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3440654
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Liquid Metal, Liquid Electronics, human-computer interaction, user interfaces
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10116534
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