Patten Studio: Design and Technology for Interactive Experiences:

Thumbles are small robots that drive around on a tabletop surface under computer control to create a new type of user interface. Users interact by grasping and moving the Thumbles around, and the computer can respond by moving them as well. The result is an interface that constantly rearranges itself based on the user’s needs.

Thumbles combine the versatility of a graphical user interface with the tactile advantages of interacting with physical objects. The robots rearrange themselves on the table based on what the user wants to do. For example, the Thumbles can represent characters in a video game, or molecules in a chemistry simulation.

Beyond gaming and data visualization, applications include video editing, command and control and logistics. There are a great deal of real-world problems that computers are not good at solving alone and people likewise have trouble solving, but people and computers working together using the right tools can solve very well. We believe that Thumbles are particularly well suited for these problems, particularly when teams of people must work together to develop a solution….

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