Tangible Interactions with Acoustic Levitation

Acoustic Levitation can hold millimetric objects in mid-air without any physical contact. This capability has been exploited to create displays since being able to position mid-air physical voxels enables for rich data representations. However, most of the times interesting features of acoustic levitation are not exploited. Acoustic Levitation is harmless and sound diffracts around objects, thus we can insert our hand inside the levitator and touch the levitated particles without harmful effect on us. In this demo, we showcase more tangible interactions with acoustically levitated particles by passing acoustically-transparent structures through the particles, manipulating particles in mid-air with wearable levitators or by moving multiple particles with direct manipulation. We hope that this demo provides a more tangible experience of acoustic levitation. Since all the presented devices are Do-It-Yourself, we encourage visitors to experiment further with acoustic levitation.