Motion-Controlled Furniture

The structure is made of 1,152 plastic pins controlled by microprocessors. A Kinect (working with a computer program that controls the movements) can sense when someone approaches the device. According to the project's web page:

The work is comprised of three dynamic shape displays that move more than one thousand pins up and down in real time to transform the tabletop into a dynamic tangible display. The kinetic energy of the viewers, captured by a sensor, drives the wave motion represented by the dynamic pins.

Some of the same technology was used in the group's previous inFORM project, which used human motion to affect a 3D display.

Source: Wired