Acoustic Manipulation of Tangible Janus Icons on Liquid Droplets

TL;DR

PolygonWave is a contactless acoustic interface that manipulates tangible Janus icons on liquid droplets, enabling programmable motion and interaction in open settings without embedded actuators.

Contribution

It introduces a novel acoustic system coupling airborne ultrasound with liquid support to manipulate and interact with tangible icons in a contactless manner.

Findings

Transport of payloads up to 525 mg demonstrated.

Reconfigurable button-like input with self-recovery.

Resonance-driven vibro-visual feedback near 22 Hz.

Abstract

Interfaces that couple digital information with physical matter enable computation to be expressed through tangible motion and touch, yet typically rely on embedded actuators, rigid mechanisms, or enclosed environments. Consequently, contactless manipulation and interaction with centimeter-scale tangible elements in open settings remain difficult to achieve. Here, we present PolygonWave, a solid--fluid acoustic interface that enables transport and tangible interaction by coupling airborne ultrasound with liquid-mediated support. The system employs lightweight Janus icons with asymmetric wettability: a superhydrophobic upper surface permits dry touch interaction, while a hydrophilic lower surface couples to a water droplet resting on a superhydrophobic mesh. Focused acoustic fields generated by a 256-element phased array induce lateral forces, enabling programmable motion without mechanical contact. Systematic characterization demonstrates transport of payloads up to 525 mg across variations in icon size, droplet volume, and applied load. Beyond translation, the liquid layer functions as a reconfigurable mechanical element, enabling button-like input with self-recovery and resonance-driven vibro-visual feedback, exhibiting a peak response near 22 Hz for 200 \textmu L droplets. Liquid-mediated acoustic coupling provides a unified mechanism for mechanically expressive, touch-accessible tangible interfaces bridging acoustics, soft matter physics, and physical human--computer interaction.