While the jury may still be out, one trend that seems to be gaining momentum in mobile electronics is modularity. From our smartwatches to phones, what if you could piece together your own device with functions required at that moment? With this in mind, a team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Purdue, Lancaster and Sussex have developed what very well may be the next evolution of gadgetry.
Cubimorph is an interactive device that uses a chain of cubes, each of which have touchscreens on their six sides. Meanwhile, a hinge-mounted turntable mechanism enables the gadget to reconfigure itself in someone’s hand on demand depending on the use case.
Kind of like LEGO meets the Rubik’s Cube, the prototype is comprised of several modules that can be combined in a variety of ways to suit each user’s particular needs — whether that’s a phone morphing into a gaming console or turning into a tablet whenever you sit down on the couch.
“We present our Cubimorph mechanical design, three prototypes demonstrating key aspects (turntable hinges, embedded touchscreens and miniaturization), and an adaptation of the probabilistic roadmap algorithm for the reconfiguration,” its creators reveal. “The modular interactive device, made out of a chain of cubes, contributes towards the vision of programmable matter, where interactive devices change its shape to fit functionalities required by end-users.”