Figure 1. Physical visualizations created with our fabrication tool, MakerVis: a) a layered scatterplot modeled after Rosling ; b) a prism map showing relative happiness in US states computed from Twitter sentiments; c), d), e) layered bar charts and line charts crafted by end users.
In this paper, we examine the future of designing room-scale deployable pneumatic structures that can be fabricated with interactive capabilities and thus be responsive to human input and environments. While there have been recent advances in fabrication methods for creating large-scale structures, they have mainly focused around creating passive structures. Hence in this work, we collectively tackle three main challenges that need to be solved for designing room-scale interactive deployable structures namely -- the input, output (actuation) and construction methods. First, we explore three types of sensing methods --- acoustic, capacitive and pressure --- in order to embed input into these structures. These sensing methods enable users to perform gestures such as knock, squeeze and swipe with specific parts of our fabricated structure such as doors, windows, etc. and make them interactive. Second, we explore three types of actuation mechanisms -- inflatable tendon drive, twisted tendon drive and roll bending actuator -- that are implemented at structural scale and can be embedded into our structures to enable a variety of responsive actuation. Finally, we provide a construction method to custom fabricate and assemble inter-connected pneumatic trusses with embedded sensing and actuation capability to prototype interactions with room-scale deployable structures. To further illustrate the collective (input, output and construction) usage of the system, we fabricated three exemplar interactive deployable structures -- a responsive canopy, an interactive geodesic dome and a portable table (Figures 1 and 2). These can be deployed from a compact deflated state to a much larger inflated state which takes on a desired form while offering interactivity.
Conventional vision-based systems, such as cameras, have demonstrated their enormous versatility in sensing human activities and developing interactive environments. However, these systems have long been criticized for incurring privacy, power, and latency issues due to their underlying structure of pixel-wise analog signal acquisition, computation, and communication. In this research, we overcome these limitations by introducing in-sensor analog computation through the distribution of interconnected photodetectors in space, having a weighted responsivity, to create what we call a computational photodetector. Computational photodetectors can be used to extract mid-level vision features as a single continuous analog signal measured via a two-pin connection. We develop computational photodetectors using thin and flexible low-noise organic photodiode arrays coupled with a self-powered wireless system to demonstrate a set of designs that capture position, orientation, direction, speed, and identification information, in a range of applications from explicit interactions on everyday surfaces to implicit activity detection.
An increasing variety of physical visualizations are being built, for purposes ranging from art and entertainment to business analytics and scientific research. The creation of physical visualizations is however a laborious process and demands expertise in both data visualization and (digital) fabrication. We illustrate one of the currently many possible ways of creating a physical visualization through a case-study. We then present our prototype system, MakerVis. It is the first tool that integrates the entire workflow, from data selection to digital fabrication using additive or subtractive techniques. We demonstrate the usage of MakerVis through a complete scenario of how an end-user would construct a physical visualization.
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