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  • Hydrogel-based DIY Underwater Morphing Artifacts: A morphing and fabrication technique to democratize the creation of controllable morphing 3D underwater structures with low-cost, easily available hydrogel beads adhered to a substrate.
Title: Hydrogel-based DIY Underwater Morphing Artifacts: A morphing and fabrication technique to democratize the creation of controllable morphing 3D underwater structures with low-cost, easily available hydrogel beads adhered to a substrate.
Hydrogels are versatile morphing materials that have recently been adopted for creating shape-changing interfaces. However, most shape-changing interfaces require advanced material synthesis, specialized lab settings for fabrication, and technical knowledge is needed to simulate their morphing behavior. To replicate such structures, these factors become a barrier for makers. Therefore, to democratize the creation of hydrogel-based morphing artifacts and to extend their design space in HCI, we propose a water-triggered morphing mechanism that utilizes the distance between adjacent hydrogel beads adhered on a thin substrate to control their bending angle. This paper describes the bending angle quantification experiments for creating a simulator, the process of developing a computational tool along with its user-friendly workflow and demonstrates kirigami and branch-based artifacts built with the tool. Using our method, anyone can easily design and fabricate custom morphing structures.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2017008
PAR ID:
10282901
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS '21)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1242 to 1252
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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