This work presents PITAS, a thin-sheet robotic material composed of a reversible phase transition actuating layer and a heating/sensing layer. The synthetic sheet material enables non-expert makers to create shape-changing devices that can locally or remotely convey physical information such as shape, color, texture and temperature changes. PITAS sheets can be manipulated into various 2D shapes or 3D geometries using subtractive fabrication methods such as laser, vinyl, or manual cutting or an optional additive 3D printing method for creating 3D objects. After describing the design of PITAS, this paper also describes a study conducted with thirteen makers to gauge the accessibility, design space, and limitations encountered when PITAS is used as a soft robotic material while designing physical information communication devices. Lastly, this work reports on the results of a mechanical and electrical evaluation of PITAS and presents application examples to demonstrate its utility.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517532
FabricatINK explores the personal fabrication of irregularly-shaped low-power displays using electronic ink (E ink). E ink is a programmable bicolour material used in traditional form-factors such as E readers. It has potential for more versatile use within the scope of personal fabrication of custom-shaped displays, and it has the promise to be the pre-eminent material choice for this purpose. We appraise technical literature to identify properties of E ink, suited to fabrication. We identify a key roadblock, universal access to E ink as a material, and we deliver a method to circumvent this by upcycling broken electronics. We subsequently present a novel fabrication method for irregularly-shaped E ink displays. We demonstrate our fabrication process and E ink's versatility through ten prototypes showing different applications and use cases. By addressing E ink as a material for display fabrication, we uncover the potential for users to create custom-shaped truly bistable displays.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3501844
This paper presents Interactive Robotic Plastering (IRoP), a system enabling designers and skilled workers to engage intuitively with an in-situ robotic plastering process. The research combines three elements: interactive design tools, an augmented reality interface, and a robotic spraying system. Plastering is a complex process relying on tacit knowledge and craftsmanship, making it difficult to simulate and automate. However, our system utilizes a controller-based interaction system to enable diverse users to interactively create articulated plasterwork in-situ. A customizable computational toolset converts human intentions into robotic motions while respecting robotic and material constraints. To accomplish this, we developed both an interactive computational model to translate the data from a motion-tracking system into robotic trajectories using design and editing tools as well as an audio-visual guidance system for in-situ projection. We then conducted two user-studies of designers and skilled workers who used \emph{IRoP} to design and fabricate a full-scale demonstrator.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3501842
Soft actuators with integrated sensing have shown utility in a variety of applications such as assistive wearables, robotics, and interactive input devices. Despite their promise, these actuators can be difficult to both design and fabricate. As a solution, we present a workflow for computationally designing and digitally fabricating soft pneumatic actuators \emph{via} a machine knitting process. Machine knitting is attractive as a fabrication process because it is fast, digital (programmable), and provides access to a rich material library of functional yarns for specified mechanical behavior and integrated sensing. Our method uses elastic stitches to construct non-homogeneous knitting structures, which program the bending of actuators when inflated. Our method also integrates pressure and swept frequency capacitive sensing structures using conductive yarns. The entire knitted structure is fabricated automatically in a single machine run. We further provide a computational design interface for the user to interactively preview actuators’ quasi-static shape when authoring elastic stitches. Our sensing-integrated actuators are cost-effective, easy to design, robust to large actuation, and require minimal manual post-processing. We demonstrate five use-cases of our actuators in relevant application settings.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517577