utility

3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 17:27:58 +0000

3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera Michael Kwolek Wed, 12/04/2024 - 10:27

The Utility Research Lab's work demonstrates possibilities for replacing traditional plastics in 3D printing with organic, compostable materials.

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Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:40:15 +0000

Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/26/2024 - 09:40

Carnegie Mellon University alumni profile details how our Utility Research Lab director employs sustainable materials in place of plastics in 3D printing and textile development.

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How fibers spun from gelatin could help reduce textile waste

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:48:23 +0000

How fibers spun from gelatin could help reduce textile waste Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/08/2024 - 10:48

NPR interviews Utility Research Lab director, Michael Rivera, on biofibers research for use in sustainable textiles.

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Wear it, then recycle: ATLAS Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 19:24:50 +0000

Wear it, then recycle: ATLAS Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/17/2024 - 13:24

In a new study, a team of ATLAS engineers and designers developed a DIY machine that spins textile fibers made of materials like sustainably sourced gelatin. The group’s “biofibers” feel a bit like flax fiber and dissolve in hot water in minutes to an hour.

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3D printing with coffee: Turning used grounds into caffeinated creations

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 16:13:05 +0000

3D printing with coffee: Turning used grounds into caffeinated creations Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/08/2023 - 10:13

Utility Research Lab director Michael Rivera uses surprising materials to fabricate useful objects.

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Sandra Bae, ATLAS PhD Student, Awarded at VIS 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:47:51 +0000

Sandra Bae, ATLAS PhD Student, Awarded at VIS 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/30/2023 - 09:47

Michael Kwolek

Sandra Bae, PhD student and member of the Utility Research Lab and ACME Lab at ATLAS, has been honored with a Best Paper Honorable Mention at VIS 2023 for her research on network physicalizations.

Billed as “the premier forum for advances in theory, methods and applications of visualization and visual analytics”, VIS 2023 will be held in Melbourne, Australia, from October 22-27, and is sponsored by IEEE. The Best Papers Committee bestows honorable mentions on the top 5% of publications submitted.

The paper introduces a computational design pipeline to 3D print physical representations of networks enabling touch interactivity via capacitive sensing and computational inference.

[video:https://youtu.be/uv0Yu0WUeSQ]

A Computational Design Process to Fabricate Sensing Network Physicalizations
S. Sandra Bae, Takanori Fujiwara, Anders Ynnerman, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Michael L. Rivera, Danielle Albers Szafir

Abstract
Interaction is critical for data analysis and sensemaking. However, designing interactive physicalizations is challenging as it requires cross-disciplinary knowledge in visualization, fabrication, and electronics. Interactive physicalizations are typically produced in an unstructured manner, resulting in unique solutions for a specific dataset, problem, or interaction that cannot be easily extended or adapted to new scenarios or future physicalizations. To mitigate these challenges, we introduce a computational design pipeline to 3D print network physicalizations with integrated sensing capabilities. Networks are ubiquitous, yet their complex geometry also requires significant engineering considerations to provide intuitive, effective interactions for exploration. Using our pipeline, designers can readily produce network physicalizations supporting selection-the most critical atomic operation for interaction-by touch through capacitive sensing and computational inference. Our computational design pipeline introduces a new design paradigm by concurrently considering the form and interactivity of a physicalization into one cohesive fabrication workflow. We evaluate our approach using (i) computational evaluations, (ii) three usage scenarios focusing on general visualization tasks, and (iii) expert interviews. The design paradigm introduced by our pipeline can lower barriers to physicalization research, creation, and adoption.

Bae describes potential use cases for sensing network physicalizations:

Accessibility visualization - Accessible visualizations (e.g., tactile visualizations) focus on making data visualization more inclusive, particularly for those with low vision or blindness. However, most tactile visualizations are static and non-interactive, which reduces data expressiveness and inhibits data exploration. This technique can create more interactive tactile visualizations.
AR/VR - Most AR/VR devices use computer vision (CV), but most devices using CV cannot reproduce the haptic benefits that we naturally leverage (holding, rotating, tracing) with our sense of touch. Past studies confirm the importance of tangible inputs when virtually exploring data. But creating tangible devices for AR/VR requires too much instrumentation to make them interactive. Our technique would enable developers to more easily produce fully functional, responsive controllers right from the printer within a single pass.

The work continues as Bae plans to pursue more complex designs and richer interactivity including:

Fabricating bigger networks - The biggest network Bae has 3D printed so far is 20 nodes and 40 links, but this is rather small for most network datasets. She will scale this technique to support bigger networks.

Supporting output - Interactive objects receive input (e.g., from touch) and produce output (e.g., light, sound, color change) in a controlled manner. The sensing network currently addresses the first part of the interaction loop by responding to touch inputs, but she next wants to explore how to support output.

Bae showcased this research along with fellow ATLAS community members at the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival earlier this year. We’re excited to see where her innovative research leads next.

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16 Members of the ATLAS Community Present Groundbreaking Research on Human-Computer Interaction at ACM DIS 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 19:43:45 +0000

16 Members of the ATLAS Community Present Groundbreaking Research on Human-Computer Interaction at ACM DIS 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/05/2023 - 13:43

Michael Kwolek

ATLAS is well-represented at this year’s ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2023 conference convening at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from July 10-14, 2023. This year’s theme is resilience.

"Resilience is at once about flexibility, durability, and strength as well as a sense of mutuality and hope where solidaristic modes of engagement make new kinds of worlds possible.

This also recognizes that resilience takes many forms in design discourse, ranging across: indigenous knowledge, more-than-human perspectives, and the relationship between human, material and artificial intelligences."

It is exciting to see members across more than half of ATLAS labs represented in this year’s proceedings, with broad-reaching research covering microbiomes as materials for interactive design; 3D printing with spent coffee grounds; personal informatics systems; improving cross-disciplinary collaboration among artists and researchers; expressive movement for altering emotions and awareness; and the intersection of crocheting and data. Take a look:

µMe: Exploring the Human Microbiome as an Intimate Material for Living Interfaces
Fiona Bell (ATLAS PhD alum), Michelle Ramsahoye (ATLAS affiliate PhD student), Joshua Coffie (ATLAS MS alum), Julia Tung (ATLAS BS student), and Mirela Alistar (ATLAS Living Matter Lab director, assistant professor)

Our bodies are home to an unseen ecosystem of microbes that live in symbiosis with us. In this work, we extend the “human” in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to include these microbes. Specifically, we explore the skin microbiome as an intimate material for interaction design. Viewing the body as a microbial interface, we start by presenting a method to grow our microbiome such that it becomes visible to the human eye. We then present a design space that explores how different environmental parameters, such as temperature and growth media, can be controlled to influence the color of the microbiome. We further investigate how our interactions in a daily uncontrolled environment (e.g., exercising, hugging, typing) can impact the microbiome. We demonstrate several wearable applications that reveal and control the microbiome. Lastly, we address the challenges and opportunities of working with the microbiome as an intimate, living material for interaction design.

Designing a Sustainable Material for 3D Printing with Spent Coffee Grounds
Michael L. Rivera (ATLAS Utility Research Lab Director, assistant professor), S. Sandra Bae (ATLAS PhD student)

The widespread adoption of 3D printers exacerbates existing environmental challenges as these machines increase energy consumption, waste output, and the use of plastics. Material choice for 3D printing is tightly connected to these challenges, and as such researchers and designers are exploring sustainable alternatives. Building on these efforts, this work explores using spent coffee grounds as a sustainable material for prototyping with 3D printing. This material, in addition to being compostable and recyclable, can be easily made and printed at home. We describe the material in detail, including the process of making it from readily available ingredients, its material characteristics and its printing parameters. We then explore how it can support sustainable prototyping practices as well as HCI applications. In reflecting on our design process, we discuss challenges and opportunities for the HCI community to support sustainable prototyping and personal fabrication. We conclude with a set of design considerations for others to weigh when exploring sustainable materials for 3D printing and prototyping.

For additional details, see our article on how this and other Utility Research Lab projects won awards at the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival.

Being, Having, Doing, and Interacting: A Personal Informatics Approach to Understanding Human Need Satisfaction in Everyday Life
Michael Jeffrey Daniel Hoefer, Stephen Voida, (ATLAS affiliate assistant professor, founding faculty, information science)

A grand challenge for computing is to better understand fundamental human needs and their satisfaction. In this work, we design a personal informatics technology probe that scaffolds reflection on how time-use satisfies Max-Neef's fundamental needs of being, having, doing, and interacting via self-aspects, relationships and organizations, activities, and environments. Through a combination of a think-aloud study (N=10) and a week-long in situ deployment (N=7), participants used the probe to complete self- aspect elicitation and Day Reconstruction Method tasks. Participants then interacted with network visualizations of their daily lives, and discovered insights about their lives. During the study, we collected a dataset of 662 activities annotated with need satisfaction ratings. Despite challenges in operationalizing a theory of need through direct elicitation from individuals, personal informatics systems show potential as a participatory and individually meaningful approach for understanding need satisfaction in everyday life.

Enhancing Accessibility in Soft Robotics: Exploring Magnet-Embedded Paper-Based Interactions
Ruhan Yang (ATLAS PhD student), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab director, faculty member)

This paper explores the implementation of embedded magnets to enhance paper-based interactions. The integration of magnets in paper-based interactions simplifies the fabrication process, making it more accessible for building soft robotics systems. We discuss various interaction patterns achievable through this approach and highlight their potential applications.

[Workshop] Towards Mutual Benefit: Reflecting on Artist Residencies as a Method for Collaboration in DIS
Laura Devendorf (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab director, assistant professor), Leah Buechley, Noura Howell, Jennifer Jacobs, Hsin-Liu (Cindy) Kao, Martin Murer, Daniela Rosner, Nica Ross, Robert Soden, Jared Tso, Clement Zheng (ATLAS PhD alum)

While cross-disciplinary collaboration has long been, and continues to be a cornerstone of inventive work in interactive design, the infrastructures of academia, as well as barriers to participation imposed by our professional organizations, make collaboration for some groups harder than others. In this workshop, we’ll focus specifically on how artists residencies are addressing (or not) the challenges that artists, craftspeople, and/or independent designers face when collaborating with researchers affiliated with DIS. While focusing on the question “what is mutual benefit”, this workshop seeks to combine the perspectives of artists as well as researchers collaborating with artists (through residencies or otherwise) to (1) reflect on benefits or deficiencies in what we are currently doing and (2) generate resources for our community to effectively structure and evaluate our methods of collaboration with artists. Our hope is to provide recognition of and pathways for equitable inclusion of artists as a first step towards broader infrastructural change.

Refer to the Unstable Design Lab website for more details on this research.

[Demo] SoniSpace: Expressive Movement Interaction to Encourage Taking Up Space with the Body
Ruojia Sun (ATLAS PhD student), Althea Vail Wallop (ATLAS MS student), Grace Leslie (ATLAS Brain Music Lab director, assistant professor), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab director, faculty member)

Movement forms the basis of our thoughts, emotions, and ways of being in the world. Informed by somaesthetics, we design for "taking up space" (e.g. encouraging expansive body movements), which may in turn alter our emotional experience. We demonstrate SoniSpace, an expressive movement interaction experience that uses movement sonification and visualization to encourage users to take up space with their body. We use a first-person design approach to embed qualities of awareness, exploration, and comfort into the sound and visual design to promote authentic and enjoyable movement expression regardless of prior movement experience. Preliminary results from 20 user experiences with the system show that users felt more comfortable with taking up space and with movement in general following the interaction. We discuss our findings about designing for somatically-focused movement interactions and directions for future work.

[Demo] Crochet and Data Activity Book
Mikhaila Friske (ATLAS affiliate PhD student)

This demo focuses around crocheting and data. In addition to a physical workbook for conference goers to peruse and try, there will be a few small set-ups for specific activities and a small craft circle for people to craft within if they so choose.

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ATLAS Members Explore Childhood Play and Learning Through Interactive Design at IDC 2023

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 18:29:52 +0000

ATLAS Members Explore Childhood Play and Learning Through Interactive Design at IDC 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/19/2023 - 12:29

11 ATLAS community members have contributed to work featured at the 22nd annual ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference to be held on June 19-23, 2023 at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. IDC is the premier international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies and new technologies in the areas of inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction. IDC’23 is hosted by the Center for Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.

Coming out of the pandemic, this year’s theme asks participants to “rediscover childhood” to understand what it means to be a child in this and coming decades and what adults can do to provide a sustainable and equitable future for the next generation. Key topics include privacy, ethics, equity, social and emotional wellbeing, sustainability, and healthy human development.

Research presented by ATLAS faculty, students and affiliates

Designing Together, Miles Apart: A Longitudinal Tabletop Telepresence Adventure in Online Co-Design with Children
Casey Lee Hunt (ATLAS THING Lab member, PhD student), Kaiwen Sun, Zahra Dhuliawala, Fumi Tsukiyama, Iva Matkovic, Zachary Schwemler (ATLAS MS alumnus), Anastasia Wolf, Zihao Zhang, Allison Druin, Amanda Huynh, Daniel Leithinger (ATLAS THING Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member), Jason Yip

Children’s online co-design has become prevalent since COVID-19. However, related research focuses on insights gained across several shorter-term projects, rather than longitudinal investigations. To explore longitudinal co-design online, we engaged in participatory design with children (ages 8 - 12) for 20 sessions in two years on a single project: an online collaboration platform with tabletop telepresence robots. We found that (1) the online technology space required children to play a role as technology managers and troubleshooters, (2) the home setting shaped online social dynamics, and (3) providing children the ability to choose their design techniques prevented gridlock from situational uncertainties. We discuss how each finding resulted from interplay between our long-term technology design and online co-design processes. We then present insights about the future of online co-design, a conceptual model for longitudinal co-design online, and describe opportunities for further longitudinal online co-design research to generate new methods, techniques, and theories.

Exploring Computational Thinking with Physical Play through Design
Junnan Yu, Ronni Hayden (PhD student), Ricarose Roque (Assistant Professor, Information Science)

Physical play has often been leveraged to provide children with active and engaging learning experiences. However, coding activities are predominantly sedentary in front of the screen, and the application of physical play in Computer Science education is less explored, e.g., how can we engage in computational thinking (CT) through physical play? In this design-based exploration, we conducted three design activities where young children, college students, and researchers were invited to create physical play projects using the BBC micro:bit and reflect on their experiences. By examining participants’ projects and creating processes, we provide empirical evidence that remixing physical play activities with coding can engage learners in various CT concepts and practices, reveal how CT concepts and practices can be represented in physical play, and highlight implications for designing physical play-mediated computational learning experiences. Ultimately, we encourage more learning experiences to incorporate physical play into computing education for children.

Ricarose Roque chairs the session “Computational and Data Literacy” in which this paper is included.

[Pictorial] Imagining Alternative Visions of Computing: Photo-Visuals of Material, Social, and Emotional Contexts from Family Creative Learning
Ricarose Roque (Assistant Professor, Information Science)

This pictorial presents visuals of families engaging with creative technologies as “knowledge-building artifacts” to provoke reflection on the social, material, and emotional context of designed interactions (“things that make you think”) as well as provocations to re-value these contexts and promote alternative visions in what and how engagement with computing can look like (“things that matter”). The selected images are from a large and ongoing collection of documentation from a family technology program. The images were captured using the Reggio Emilia documentation approach to documentation, which aims to “make learning visible.”

Ricarose Roque is one of three Pictorial Chairs in the conference Organizing Committee.

[Work-in-progress] Cartoonimator: A Low-cost, Paper-based Animation Kit for Computational Thinking
Krithik Ranjan (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Peter Gyory (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD Candidate), Michael L. Rivera (Utility Research Lab Director, Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction and Digital Fabrication), and Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member)

Computational thinking has been identified as an important skill for children to learn in the 21st century, and many innovative kits and tools have been developed to integrate it into children’s learning. Yet, most solutions require the use of devices like computers or other expensive hardware, thus being inaccessible to low-income schools and communities. We present Cartoonimator, a low-cost, paper-based computational kit for children to create animations and engage with computational thinking. Cartoonimator requires only paper and a smartphone to use, offering an affordable learning experience. Children can draw the scenes and characters for their animation on the paper, which is printed with computer vision markers. We developed the mobile web app to provide an interface to capture keyframes and compile them into animations. In this paper, we describe the implementation and workflow of Cartoonimator, its deployment with children at a local STEAM event, and a planned evaluation for the kit.

[Work-in-progress] Empower Children in Nigeria to Design the Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through Writing
Cornelius Onimisi Adejoro, Luise Arn, Larissa Schwartz (Master's student), Tom Yeh (Associate Professor, Computer Science)

This paper presents a new approach to engaging children in Nigeria to share their views of AI. This approach is centered on an inclusive writing contest for children in a secondary school in Abuja to write about AI to compete for prizes and share their writings with others. A preliminary analysis of the first 11 articles we received exhibits diverse gender and ethnic representation that conveys cultural values and perspectives distinct from those of the children in Western countries. This finding suggests future work to conduct an in-depth cross-cultural analysis of the articles and to replicate similar writing contests to engage children in other underrepresented countries

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ATLAS affiliates receive seed grants to study AI-augmented learning

Anonymous — Wed, 24 May 2023 17:12:39 +0000

ATLAS affiliates receive seed grants to study AI-augmented learning Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/24/2023 - 11:12

The Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning Interdisciplinary Research Theme awarded multiple seed grants this spring to help spur research teaming in the college and boost early projects with the high potential for societal impact, including to several ATLAS Institute affiliates.

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ATLAS Innovators Win Big at RepRap Festival

Anonymous — Mon, 08 May 2023 18:06:22 +0000

ATLAS Innovators Win Big at RepRap Festival Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/08/2023 - 12:06

The first annual Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival (RMRRF) took place in Loveland, CO, and the ATLAS Utility Research Lab crew showed up in a big way.

RepRap is a global movement focused on developing freely-available 3D printers that can produce most of their own components, with the goals of simplifying manufacturing, saving resources and democratizing access to fabrication tools.

The festival brought members of the regional and global 3D printing community together to celebrate innovations and intriguing experiments in replicating rapid prototyping (while enjoying a friendly Battle Racer competition or two).

In all, over 3,500 people attended, including ATLAS community members Michael Rivera, assistant professor and director of the Utility Research Lab; PhD students Sandra Bae, Eldy Lázaro, and Krithik Ranjan; and master’s student William Harris.

Most exciting of all, when it came time to announce awards, ATLAS swept three of the four categories:

Favorite 3D Print: Will Harris, Cryogenic System Protection Flexure
Most Innovative Project: Mike Rivera, Spent Coffee Grounds for Sustainable 3D Printing
Most Useful/Functional Project: Sandra Bae, Multi-Material Capacitive Touch Sensor

West 3D and Community Innovation Fund sponsored the awards - check their blog for complete details.

The team reports making numerous connections among enthusiasts as well as industry and business leaders in this burgeoning space, further solidifying ATLAS and the Utility Research Lab as leading innovators in digital fabrication technology, tools and techniques.

Their highlights:

Cocoa Press and their 3D chocolate printer
Protopasta, a maker of a wide array of brilliantly-colored filaments
Prusa Research printers, parts and software
Voron Kits, which came to RMRRF with a life-size working replica of R2D2
Rep-Raptor, a vintage 3D printer preservationist

Michael Rivera, Spent Coffee Grounds for Sustainable 3D Printing

Michael Rivera heads up the Utility Research Lab at ATLAS, with a focus on inventing and investigating digital fabrication technologies. His spent coffee grounds research came out of a frustration with the materials we currently have for 3D printing. PLA, the most commonly-used medium, is sold as “compostable,” but it is actually extremely difficult to break down. As a result, waste PLA usually ends up in landfills, where it takes up to 1,000 years to decompose.

While brainstorming alternate 3D printing materials, Rivera learned that an estimated 15 million tonnes of spent coffee grounds are generated annually, much of it going to landfills despite its rich composting properties. When chatting with the team at Arriviste Coffee in Pittsburgh, PA, he came up with the idea to test coffee grounds in 3D printing. Arriviste happily agreed to provide all the spent grounds used in Rivera’s research.

Rivera has since experimented with various types of grounds (espresso provides better printing resolution due to its finer grind) and precise ratios of grounds to readily-available food-grade binders (xanthan gum and carboxymethylcellulose) to ensure the material can be easily extruded. Most recently, he has been testing print speeds to more quickly build 3D forms.

So what does one create with a coffee grounds-based 3D printing material? Espresso cups, naturally. Rivera lined his current prints with beeswax to make them water-tight, though he plans to test carnauba wax, which may work better with hot drinks as it has a higher melting point.

Once his research is published, Rivera plans to make it all open-source. Until then, he says,

“It’s validating to be around a community passionate about the work you’re doing. It’s a breath of fresh air having gone to the festival and seen a thriving community excited about 3D printing.”

When you’re so often heads-down in academic research, it’s great to witness how your work connects with an enthusiastic audience at a gathering like the RepRap Festival.

Sandra Bae, Multi-material Capacitive Touch Sensor

Sandra Bae’s award-winning project uses computational design and multi-material 3D printing to create capacitive touch sensors within complex, non-planar objects (e.g., 3D networks). This technique can support multiple touchpoints using a single wire connection.

She said, "It was an amazing experience to talk about my research with a completely different audience than I'm used to addressing at research conferences. It was definitely worth connecting with industry members such as ProtoPasta and Prusa Research, whose products made my research possible. It was so great to see their reactions to my work! Before, I had a lot of questions about whether I was on the right track or not, but the RepRap festival was incredibly affirming. Industry, hobbyists and other academics were throwing possible application ideas left and right at me on how to further this research and provided great community feedback."

Will Harris, Favorite 3D print

Will Harris, who had a series of projects on display, said, “I had such a good time at the RepRap festival. It was my first time presenting my work in person, and I met so many people whom I admire from the community. Some of my projects got more attention than I expected, which encouraged me to publish them. I hadn't considered that earlier.” You can check out more of his work on his website.

For fellow 3D printing aficionados, the Midwest RepRap Festival will be held June 23-25 in Goshen, IN.

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