Fabrication Lab

We are a group of researchers studying, developing, and teaching digital fabrication technologies at the Department of Computer Science. Our research includes designing new software and hardware tools to design for and interact with digital fabrication machines, inventing new kinds of interfaces that can be built with digital fabrication machines, and understanding how people learn to build such interfaces.

Research projects

An overview of research projects related to the Fabrication Lab group.

Digital Fabrication of Personalized Functional Devices

This project is led by Valkyrie Savage and funded by the Novo Nordisk Fonden. The grant supports two PhD students to work on topics at the intersection of fabrication, sensing, and anatomy. How can we 3D print novel devices that are easy to sense? How can we automatically design hand-held devices that are well-suited to particular users and their tasks? We are exploring how 3D modeling and printing can help reduce repetitive stress injuries and lead to more effective object designs for particular situations.

Thread-Powered Metamaterial Mechanisms

This project is led by Daniel Ashbrook and funded by the DFF.

Educational actvities

User Interface Technology course

The User Interface Technology course is offered at the Department of Computer Science. The course is targeted at first year MSc students, and is an elective course. In addition, many international exchange students take the course every year. This course covers the basics of user interface design and prototyping with 3D printers, lasercutters, microcontrollers, and more.

Supervision

We are happy to supervise student projects (e.g., project outside course scope, BSc, and MSc thesis projects) that involve digital fabrication, sensing, or other hardware technologies. Please feel free to reach out directly to the researchers listed below if you have an idea for a project or a thesis proposal, or examine their websites to get inspiration.

Collaboration

We collaborate with researchers from universities in Aarhus, DK, Birmingham, UK, Daejeon, KR, Saarbrucken, DE, Toronto, CA, Maryland, US, and more. We are also actively seeking industry collaborations for Masters theses or Industrial PhDs.

Publication highlights

Explore some of our results in these publications:

Valkyrie Savage, Carlos Tejada, Mengyu Zhong, Raf Ramakers, Daniel Ashbrook, and Hyunyoung Kim (2022): "AirLogic: Embedding Pneumatic Computation and I/O in 3D Models to Fabricate Electronics-Free Interactive Objects."

Valkyrie Savage, Sarah Homewood, and Irina Shklovski (2023): "Objectify: Better Living Through Anticipatory, Just-for-you 3D Printing!"

Aaron Visschedijk, Hyunyoung Kim, Carlos Tejada, and Daniel Ashbrook (2022): "ClipWidgets: 3D-printed Modular Tangible UI Extensions for Smartphones."

Hyunyoung Kim, Aluna Everitt, Carlos Tejada, Mengyu Zhong, and Daniel Ashbrook (2021): "MorpheesPlug: A Toolkit for Prototyping Shape-Changing Interfaces."

People

Name	Title
Athina Panotopoulou	Postdoc
Atul Chaudhary	PhD Fellow
Bhaskar Dutt	PhD Student
Daniel Lee Ashbrook	Associate Professor
Valkyrie Savage	Assistant Professor - Tenure Track