PortaChrome: A Portable Contact Light Source for Integrated Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures

TY - GEN

T1 - PortaChrome

T2 - A Portable Contact Light Source for Integrated Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures

AU - Zhu, Yunyi

AU - Honnet, Cedric

AU - Kang, Yixiao

AU - Zhu, Junyi

AU - Zheng, Angelina J.

AU - Heinz, Kyle

AU - Tang, Grace

AU - Musk, Luca

AU - Wessely, Michael

AU - Mueller, Stefanie

PY - 2024/10/13

Y1 - 2024/10/13

N2 - In this paper, we present PortaChrome, a portable light source that can be attached to everyday objects to reprogram the color and texture of surfaces that come in contact with them. When PortaChrome makes contact with objects previously coated with photochromic dye, the UV and RGB LEDs inside PortaChrome create multi-color textures on the objects. In contrast to prior work, which used projectors for the color-change, PortaChrome has a thin and flexible form factor, which allows the color-change process to be integrated into everyday user interaction. Because of the close distance between the light source and the photochromic object, PortaChrome creates color textures in less than 4 minutes on average, which is 8 times faster than prior work. We demonstrate PortaChrome with four application examples, including data visualizations on textiles and dynamic designs on wearables.

AB - In this paper, we present PortaChrome, a portable light source that can be attached to everyday objects to reprogram the color and texture of surfaces that come in contact with them. When PortaChrome makes contact with objects previously coated with photochromic dye, the UV and RGB LEDs inside PortaChrome create multi-color textures on the objects. In contrast to prior work, which used projectors for the color-change, PortaChrome has a thin and flexible form factor, which allows the color-change process to be integrated into everyday user interaction. Because of the close distance between the light source and the photochromic object, PortaChrome creates color textures in less than 4 minutes on average, which is 8 times faster than prior work. We demonstrate PortaChrome with four application examples, including data visualizations on textiles and dynamic designs on wearables.

KW - color-changing inks

KW - digital fabrication

KW - display fabrication

KW - photochromic dyes

KW - programmable textures

KW - color-changing material

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85215103531

U2 - 10.1145/3654777.3676458

DO - 10.1145/3654777.3676458

M3 - Article in proceedings

SP - 1

EP - 13

BT - UIST 2024 - Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

ER -