Related papers: Biodegradable Interactive Materials
While human technology is ruled by determinism, biological systems exploit a subtle balance of control and stochasticity. This balance, evident in the morphogenesis of textural patterns imprinted on leaves, fur or skin can help hierarchize…
This dissertation presents three years of academic inquiry into the question of what role materials play in interaction design and participatory design processes. The dissertation aims at developing conceptual tools, based on Deweys…
The capacity to adapt can greatly influence the success of systems that need to compensate for damaged parts, learn how to achieve robust performance in new environments, or exploit novel opportunities that originate from new technological…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials have disrupted materials science due to the development of van der Waals technology. It enables the stacking of ultrathin layers of materials characterized by vastly different electronic structures to create…
The human foot serves as the critical interface between the body and environment during locomotion. Existing musculoskeletal models typically oversimplify foot-ground contact mechanics, limiting their ability to accurately simulate human…
To manipulate various types of physical signals in one single device has long captivated the attention of scientists and engineers. This however is very challenging, if not impossible, even for emerging metamaterials. Up to date, many…
Stretchable electronics capable of conforming to nonplanar and dynamic human body surfaces are central for creating implantable and on-skin devices for high-fidelity monitoring of diverse physiological signals. While various strategies have…
Robots which interact with the physical world will benefit from a fine-grained tactile understanding of objects and surfaces. Additionally, for certain tasks, robots may need to know the haptic properties of an object before touching it. To…
Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…
Pristine van der Waals (vdW) interfaces between two-dimensional (2D) and other materials are core to emerging optical and electronic devices. Their direct fabrication is, however, challenged as the vdW forces are weak and cannot be tuned to…
The increasing demands of sustainable energy, electronics, and biomedical applications call for next-generation functional materials with unprecedented properties. Of particular interest are emerging materials that display exceptional…
Spatial computing technologies have the potential to revolutionize how we interact with the world around us. However, most modern integrated development environments (IDEs) have not fully adapted to this paradigm shift. For example,…
The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly empowering people with an interconnected world of physical objects ranging from smart buildings to portable smart devices such as wearables. With recent advances in mobile sensing, wearables have…
The need to reduce the environmental impact of inorganic electronic systems is pressing. Although the field of organic electronics provides a potential solution to this issue, research and optimization is still majorly carried out on glass…
To enable robots to develop human-like fine manipulation, it is essential to understand how mechanical compliance, multi-modal sensing, and purposeful interaction jointly shape tactile perception. In this study, we use a dedicated modular…
Electronic textiles (e-textiles) are about to face tremendous environmental and resource challenges due to the complexity of sorting, the risk to supplies and metal contamination in textile recycling streams. This is because e-textiles are…
The sustainable development of next-generation device technology is paramount in the face of climate change and the looming energy crisis. Tremendous efforts have been made in the discovery and design of nanomaterials that achieve…
World models for deformable objects should recover not only geometry and appearance, but also underlying physical dynamics, interaction grounding, and material behavior. Learning such a model from real videos is challenging because…
In this paper, we present a methodology that uses an optical tactile sensor for efficient tactile exploration of embedded objects within soft materials. The methodology consists of an exploration phase, where a probabilistic estimate of the…
Rich contact perception is crucial for robotic manipulation, yet traditional tactile skins remain expensive and complex to integrate. This paper presents a scalable alternative: high-accuracy whole-body touch localization via vibro-acoustic…