Balloonygen, an extended tabletop display embedded with a balloon-like deformable spherical screen, is a display that can seamlessly expose a spherical screen for three-dimensional contents, such as omnidirectional images, in a conventional flat display. By continuously morphing between a two-dimensional shape called tabletop and a three-dimensional shape called sphere, we render the benefits of a flat display and a spherical display to coexist and propose a smoother approach for information sharing. Balloonygen dynamically provides an optimal way to display the contents by inflating the rubber membrane installed at the center of a tabletop display and morphing between the two- and three-dimensional shapes. In this study, by prototyping and designing the application scenario, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this display and possible interactions involved.

Papers:

- Soichiro Toyohara, Toshiki Sato, and Hideki Koike. 2018. Balloonygen: extended tabletop display embedded with balloon-like deformable spherical screen. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST '18), Stephen N. Spencer (Ed.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 7, 5 pages. (ACM DL)