ACM SYMPOSIUM ON
COMPUTATIONAL FABRICATION

Self-Assembly & Programmable Materials

Abstract: 3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1980s. The Self-Assembly Lab is developing the next phase of this field through their work on Rapid Liquid Printing, Programmable Materials and 4D printing: where the fourth dimension is time. These emerging technologies will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. In this presentation, Tibbits explains how we are now able to program nearly everything-from materials, to products, architecture, and infrastructure. Programmability and computing are becoming ubiquitous across scales and disciplines. Tibbits shows us how these small-scale technologies can translate into solutions for large-scale applications.

Bio: Skylar Tibbits co-directs the Self-Assembly Lab with Jared Laucks, housed at MIT’s International Design Center. The Self-Assembly Lab focuses on self-assembly and programmable material technologies for novel manufacturing, products and construction processes.

Skylar is an Assistant Professor of Design Research in the Department of Architecture at MIT where he teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios. Skylar is also the Editor-In-Chief of the 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Journal and the founder of SJET LLC, a small multi-disciplinary design practice.

Making the Entire World Interactive: Innovation and Creativity on a Very Large Scale

Abstract: Information is no longer confined to the pixels on our screens. Instead the entire physical world, even living and breathing matter, are being infused with digital data, changing the essence of how we live, work, and play. As the line between real and virtual blurs, new approaches to design and manufacturing that would allow to seamlessly blends physical and digital in product and services are required. In this talk I will discuss a number of projects where I explored emerging approaches that allow to manufacture interactivity into physical world at a very large scale. The projects include tactile and haptic feedback, shape-changing interfaces and 3D printing of active interactive objects as well as energy harvesting techniques from paper-like materials among others. I will conclude with Project Jacquard, where we invented highly manufacturable interactive textiles that allow to manufacture consumer grade connected garments at scale using traditional manufacturing facilities. The product based on Jacquard technology was developed in collaboration with Levi's and expected to be released on the market in Fall 2018.

Bio: Dr. Ivan Poupyrev is an award-winning scientist, designer and technology leader working at the cutting edge of interaction technologies and techniques blending digital and physical. Ivan is currently a Director of Engineering and a Technical Lead at Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division where he leads a team developing novel breakthrough technologies for future wearable and ubiquitous computing. Prior to Google he was Principal Research Scientist at Walt Disney Imagineering and before that Ivan was Researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo. He also did stints at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington as a Visiting Scientist and at Princeton University School of Architecture as a Visiting Lecturer.

Ivan's research focuses on inventing new technologies and interaction paradigms that seamlessly blend digital and physical interactivity in devices, everyday objects, and living environments on a very large scale. The results of his work have been presented at major research conferences and was broadly reported in popular media including BBC, CNN, New York Times, Wired, New Scientist, Time, Forbes to name a few. His research was released on the market in a variety of products worldwide and received numerous international awards including D&AD awards, ARS Prix Electronica, Cannes Lyons Grand Prix and multiple research awards at the major scientific conferences. Forrester Media featured him as one of the leading Digital Disruptors in 2013 and Fast Company Magazine recognized him as one of the World’s 100 Most Creative People in business calling him “one of the best interaction designers in the world”.

Additive Manufacturing State of the Industry

Abstract: Countless organizations of all types and sizes are considering additive manufacturing and 3D printing—terms that are used interchangeably. They are hard at work trying to understand where it is going and where they fit in. Many are awestruck by the technology and investing large amounts of money into it. Wohlers will underscore some of the developments that have led to this phenomenon and will emphasize the most important trends from the recent past. He will also share where he believes the technology will take us in the future.

Bio: Terry Wohlers is principal consultant and president of Wohlers Associates, Inc., an independent consulting firm he founded 30 years ago. Wohlers has provided consulting assistance to more than 250 organizations in 25 countries, as well as to 175+ companies in the investment community. He has authored 400 books, articles, and technical papers and has given more than 140 keynote presentations on five continents. Wohlers has twice served as a featured speaker at manufacturing related events held at the White House. As an expert in additive manufacturing, he has appeared on many television and radio news programs, including NPR, CBS Radio News, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox Business, and Australia’s Sky News. Wohlers is a principal author of the Wohlers Report, the undisputed industry-leading report on additive manufacturing and 3D printing worldwide for 22 consecutive years.

Simplifying Design of Functional and Adaptable Shapes

Abstract: Recent advances in fabrication techniques have vastly expanded the scope of creating customized shapes. One of the biggest challenge for the users, however, is how produce shapes that are functional and suitable for their target usage. While often users have a clear specification of what a designed object should be used for, amateurs can easily struggle to design a suitable shape. In this talk, I will discuss two of our recent attempts to computationally simplify this process. First, I will talk about a guided design setup to nudge users towards functional shapes. Second, I will describe how to go beyond designing the final shape to also simplifying the hoisting or folding of such a shape. For more details, please visit: http://geometry.cs.ucl.ac.uk/.

Bio: Niloy Mitra leads the Smart Geometry Processing group in the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL). He received his PhD degree from Stanford University under the guidance of Leonidas Guibas. His research interests include shape understanding, computational design, geometry processing, and more generally in computer graphics. Niloy received the ACM Siggraph Significant New Researcher Award in 2013 and the BCS Roger Needham Award in 2015. His work has twice been selected and featured as research highlights in Communication of ACM. Besides research, Niloy is an active DIYer and loves reading, climbing, and cooking.

Printing out of the Zone: Adventures with New and Different 3D Printers

Abstract: This talk will consider a range of new and unusual 3D printers, materials, and methods starting with 3D printing fuzzy objects in needle felted yarn, and spanning to a quest to print simple motors. It will consider the how and why of these approaches, with an emphasis on new uses, multi-material and multi-function printing, as well as mixed fabrication approaches which combine 3D printing with other methods.

Bio: Scott Hudson is a Professor of Human Computer Interaction in the HCI Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. There he directs the HCI PhD program he founded in 1999. Dr. Hudson is an active member of the UIST and SIGCHI research communities where he publishes a paper now and then. He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2006, and recently received the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, as well as the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence at CMU.

Architected Materials: Performance Through Deformation

Abstract: Although the study of the effect of shape and geometry on the mechanical response of solid objects has a long history, the surge of modern techniques to fabricate structures of complex form paired with our ability to simulate and better understand their response has created new opportunities for the design of architected materials with novel functionalities (also referred to as metamaterials). Since the properties of architected materials are primarily governed by the geometry of the structure (as opposed to constitutive ingredients at the material level), we show that deformation and instabilities, which significantly alter their initial geometry, can be harnessed to achieve new modes of functionality. Here, we focus on two different classes of such structures: systems built using elastic bistable beams and reconfigurable prismatic architected materials comprising a 3D network of plates and hinges.Altogether, these studies can inform simplified routes for the design of tunable architected materials over a wide range of length scales.

Bio: Katia Bertoldi is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences at the Harvard John A.Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She earned master degrees from Trento University (Italy) in 2002 and from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) in 2003, majoring in Structural Engineering Mechanics. Upon earning a Ph.D. degree in Mechanics of Materials and Structures from Trento University, in 2006, Katia joined as a PostDoc the group of Mary Boyce at MIT. In 2008 she moved to the University of Twente (the Netherlands) where she was an Assistant Professor in the faculty of Engineering Technology. In January 2010 Katia joined the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and established a group studying the mechanics of materials and structures. She is the recipient of the NSF Career Award 2011 and of the ASME's 2014 Hughes Young Investigator Award.

Dr Bertoldi’s research contributes to the design of materials with a carefully designed meso-structure that leads to novel effective behavior at the macroscale. She investigates both mechanical and acoustic properties of such structured materials, with a particular focus on harnessing instabilities and strong geometric non-linearities to generate new modes of functionality. Since the properties of the designed architected materials are primarily governed by the geometry of the structure (as opposed to constitutive ingredients at the material level), the principles she discovers are universal and can be applied to systems over a wide range of length scales.