Compact Contract: Commitments Made Easier

We all make promises to ourselves: lose 10 pounds, save more, exercise more. And yet, it is far too easy to make such promises and then find a thousand excuses to break them. Drawing on the fact that we are much less likely to make a social promise and then break it, Compact Contract is a tool for making small "contracts" with our friends and family, with a built-in reminder of the time period within which we have promised to act.

Cornucopia: Digital Gastronomy

Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia's chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

ioMaterials

ioMaterials is an umbrella project encompassing a variety of collocated sensing-actuation platforms looking at various aspects of dense sensing for humane communication, memory, and remote awareness. Using dense collocated sensing actuation and sensing, we can change common objects into an interface capable of hiding unobtrusively in plain sight. Relational Pillow and TextureWall are instantiations of this ideal.

Pulp-Based Computing

Pulp-Based Computing is a series of explorations that combine smart materials, papermaking and printing. By integrating electrically active inks and fibers during the papermaking process, it is possible create sensors and actuators that behave, look, and feel like paper. These composite materials, not only leverage the physical and tactile qualities of paper, but can also convey digital information, spawning new and unexpected application domains in ubiquitous and pervasive computing at extremely affordable costs.

Shutters

Shutters is a soft kinetic membrane for environmental control and communication. It is composed of actuated louvers (or shutters) that can be individually addressed for precise control of ventilation, daylight incidence and information display. By combining smart materials, textiles and computation, Shutters builds upon other façade systems to create living environments and work spaces that are more energy efficient, while being aesthetically pleasing and considerate of its inhabitants’ activities.

Soft Mechanics

Soft Mechanics is a research effort directed towards the design of programmable surfaces and structures which use the physical properties of materials to generate actuation.

It combines smart materials and materials with different memory and elasticity states to generate kinesis by digitally controlling their physical transformations.

This design approach can support the development of physical interfaces that can change shape to accommodate different uses and contexts, while seamlessly integrating into our environments.

Sprout I/O

Sprout I/O is a kinetic fur that can capture, mediate, and replay the physical impressions we leave in our environment. It combines embedded electronic actuators with a texturally rich substrate that is soft, fuzzy, and pliable to create a dynamic structure where every fur strand can sense physical touch and be individually moved. By developing a composite material that collocates kinetic I/O, while preserving the expectations that we normally have from interacting with physical things, we can more seamlessly embed and harness the power of computation in our surrounding environments to create more meaningful interfaces for our personal and social activities.

Surflex

Surflex is a programmable surface for the design and visualization of physical objects and spaces. It combines the different memory and elasticity states of its materials to deform and gain new shapes, providing a novel alternative for 3D fabrication and the design of physically adaptable interfaces.

Transitive Materials

Transitive Materials is an umbrella project encompassing novel materials, fabrication technologies, and traditional craft techniques which can operate in unison to create objects and spaces that realize truly omnipresent interactivity. We are developing interactive textiles, ubiquitous displays, and responsive spaces that seamlessly couple input, output, processing, communication, and power distribution, while preserving the uniqueness and emotional value of physical materials and traditional craft. Life in a Comic, Physical Heart in a Virtual Body, Augmented Pillows, Flexible Urban Display, Shutters, Sprout I/O, and Pulp-Based Computing are current instantiations of these technologies.

For more information, please visit: Transitive Materials.