Buoyancé: Reeling Helium-Inflated Balloons with Mobile Robots on the Ground for Mid-Air Tangible Display, Interaction, and Assembly

We introduce a novel approach to spatially actuated tangible UI by controlling helium-inflated balloons (HIBs) in mid-air using mobile reeling robots, named ReelBots. With a relatively compact device form factor, the robots can manipulate HIBs in an extensive vertical range, reaching relatively high altitudes (20m or more), thanks to its reeling mechanisms. The hardware offers diverse interactive functionalities and applications for representing abstract data in 3D space, reconfiguring lights and cameras in an everyday space, and assembling HIBs into diverse configurations. Our proof-of-concept implementation was developed based on omnidirectional mobile robots and a motion tracking system to demonstrate the novel approach of enriching 3D physical space. Our control software is designed to manipulate multiple robots to control the position of HIBs in real time via multiple options ranging from GUI control and tangible and gesture based controls.