[01] Tactile Intelligence: Haptic Library / Textile Jukebox
2024 - 2025 Fall
Academic + Group Work
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - MS Digital and Material Technologies - MS Capstone
Instructors: Sean Ahlquist
Collaborators: Lucas Yan
Acknowledgements:
University of Michigan, ArtsEngine Student MicroGrant
University of Michigan,
Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant
Ricardo Tiangson
did you ever hug your environment? did you have a reason to?
This research explores how knitted fabrics can produce haptic (touch-based) languages, changing shape and texture, to create new ways of experiencing touch. Using air pressure and knitted-textile surfaces of operation, the research develops soft, flexible textiles that can inflate and deflate to produce different sensations.
By integrating CNC-knitted textiles with silicone bladder systems, the project foregrounds material intelligence as an operative design medium, demonstrating how responsiveness can emerge from the coupling of computation, material behavior, and embodied interaction. Rather than treating actuation as an external or purely technical operation, the research situates tactile and haptic engagement as central to how the system performs and communicates, allowing textile behaviors to unfold through programmed inflation and deflation embedded directly within the knitted structure.
At the core of the system is a modular library of silicone bladders with varied geometries, which function as material primitives for deformation and movement. These bladders are integrated into a multi-manifold pneumatic setup that enables independent and continuous control of inflation and deflation, supporting a range of actuation modes such as rhythmic “breathing,” localized swelling, and sequential transformations. Rather than producing fixed or representational outcomes, these behaviors are designed to remain adaptive, variable, and perceptible through touch, emphasizing interaction over visual spectacle alone.
Through this approach, the project advances a notion of soft intelligence, where intelligence is not centralized in control logic but distributed across materials, textile structures, pneumatic dynamics, and human engagement. The textile does not merely execute commands; it participates in shaping the interaction through its textures. Textile Jukebox thus reframes textiles as active haptic interfaces capable of mediating between bodies, machines, and environments, and suggests new possibilities for responsive architectural and design systems grounded in material agency and embodied experience.
A significant proportion of the preceding work centers on composing shape changes through inflating molded silicon bladders of various forms and configurations. In contrast, not many interrogate the ways of creating and reconfiguring texture.
problem definition
system design scheme
3 components:
knitted textile [1], pneumatic system [2], and interaction [3]
[01] knitted textile
system components and design of knitted surface
knitting technique for expansive surfaces
structuring in nylastic yarn for introducing extra material for extra expansion
knitting technique for constraining bladders
creating a double-layered knitted textile and collapsing two layers for bladder constraint
[02] pneumatic system
the aim was to achieve variability in inflation affecting the haptic response
thinner upper layer and thicker layers
mold fabrication and multi-stage casting of different thicknesses
embedded pneumatic bladders placement and valve connection for different actuation cycles. with different cycles various interactions can be programmed and controlled
[03] interaction
diverse haptic interactions
[01] x [02] x [03]: for variety in kinetic and cutaneous feedback
tactile library: tactile qualities over inflation and time; static states
and dynamic interactions in between
stages in between: diverse actuation levels revealing diverse tactile
qualities
retro-fitting in the surrounding space:
designed textile construction is tensioned around benign everyday objects to
forumalte mediated high-sensory environments around the everyday surroundings
space capable of introducing multiple people in its space-making
tactile library in action:
various extras+
software interface: linking
yarn nomenclatures first prototype for texture change