Mathieu Le Goc

Université Paris-Saclay, Stanford University

Papers

Total Citations

387

H-Index

About

Mathieu Le Goc is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-computer interaction, robotics, and tangible user interfaces. His work fundamentally reimagines how we interact with digital information by bringing it into the physical world through swarms of autonomous micro-robots. Le Goc’s most influential contribution is the introduction of "swarm user interfaces," exemplified by his landmark paper "Zooids" (254 citations), which presents an open-source platform for tabletop interfaces composed of many small, self-propelled robots that simultaneously display information and enable direct physical interaction. He further advanced this concept with "Dynamic Composite Data Physicalization" (63 citations), where collections of wheeled micro-robots form reconfigurable physical visualizations that can represent and animate data in real-time—a breakthrough for data physicalization. In virtual reality, Le Goc addressed the challenge of haptic feedback through "Robotic Assembly of Haptic Proxy Objects" (64 citations), demonstrating how robots can dynamically construct low-resolution physical proxies for tangible VR interaction. His work has been recognized with best paper awards and continues to inspire new directions in shape-changing interfaces, collaborative augmented reality, and embodied data exploration.