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We report on a project that explored emerging technologies for intuitive and unobtrusive information interfaces in a compelling setting. An installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was part of a public exhibit and included an interactive table that presented information associated with the exhibit to the gallery visitors without visible conventional computing elements. The enabling devices included noncontact sensing of low-cost tags in physical icons, electrostatic detection of hand location in three dimensions, and sensor fusion through lightweight Internet Protocol access.

We describe an inertial measurement device based on an electrodynamically trapped proof mass. Mechanical constraints are replaced by guiding fields, permitting the trap stiffness to be tuned dynamically. Optical readout of the proof mass motion provides a measurement of acceleration and rotation, resulting in an integrated six degree of freedom inertial measurement device. We demonstrate such a device—constructed without microfabrication—with sensitivity comparable to that of commercial microelectromechanical systems technology and show how trapping parameters may be adjusted to increase dynamic range.