Researchers create Rubik's Cube-like smartphone
18 May 2016
A team of researchers from Universities of Bristol, Purdue, Lancaster and Sussex, have developed what could be the world's first Rubik's Cube smartphone. Dubbed "Cubimorph," the device features OLED touchscreens on each of its six faces. A hinge-mounted turntable mechanism allows it to self-reconfigure itself in the user's hand.
Like a Rubik's Cube, the faces are permanently connected and the motorised turntables, receive instructions from a computer running algorithms to determine how best to configure the faces based on what the user wanted to do.
The morphable prototype has been produced to create what according to its designers is "programmable matter." The concept was similar to 3D printing, except instead of printing what one needed, one shaped the existing device into a form factor that could accomplish the task.
"Cubimorph is the first step towards a real modular interactive device," Bristol University lecturer Anne Roudaut said in a statement. "Much work still needs to be achieved to put such devices in the end-user hands but we hope our work will create discussion between the human computer interaction and robotics communities that could be of benefit to one another".
According to the research team, a device like a flat smartphone could be folded and reconfigured into the shape of a game controller, or one could simply roll one's phone out into a rectangular log with a postage-stamp sized display on one end. Users could also an algorithm to help determine the best way to twist and fold the screen into the desired shape.
The device is currently in the prototype phase, and the research team is set to present it at a panel at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm later this week.
