Seminar: Manfred Lau, Lancaster University

The products that we use every day are typically designed and produced for mass consumption. An emerging alternative approach is personal fabrication: the end-user participates in the entire process of creating a customised product, from the initial concept stage of sketching and designing a 3D shape to the testing and manufacturing of the final product. In this talk, I describe various sketch-based tools that takes this approach. First, an image-based sketching tool allows the user to sketch on top of a single photo to create a new personalised object that fits well with the existing objects and environment in the photo. Second, a 2D sketching system allows novice users to sketch, design and simulate their own unique chairs. Third, a 3D augmented reality based system allows the user to draw and visualise customised furniture and other household products directly in the real-world. The problem of converting virtual 3D models into physical objects is challenging as such models are originally intended for graphics applications. I will end the talk by describing a novel framework to solve this problem with a formal grammar, and demonstrate results of converting furniture models found online to individual parts and connectors suitable for fabrication.

 http://sites.google.com/site/manfredlau/