Beast is an organic-like entity created synthetically by the incorporation of physical parameters into digital form-generation protocols. A single continuous surface, acting both as structure and as skin, is locally modulated for both structural support and corporeal aid. Beast combines structural, environmental, and corporeal performance by adapting its thickness, pattern density, stiffness, flexibility, and translucency to load, curvature, and skin-pressured areas respectively.

Carpal Skin is a prototype for a protective glove to protect against Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a medical condition in which the median nerve is compressed at the wrist, leading to numbness, muscle atrophy, and weakness in the hand. Night-time wrist splinting is the recommended treatment for most patients before going into carpal tunnel release surgery. Carpal Skin is a process by which to map the pain-profile of a particular patient—its intensity and duration—and to distribute hard and soft materials to fit the patient’s anatomical and physiological requirements, limiting movement in a customized fashion. The form-generation process is inspired by animal coating patterns in the control of stiffness variation.

CNSILK explores the design and fabrication potential of silk fibers—inspired by silkworm cocoons—for the construction of woven habitats. It explores a novel approach to the design and fabrication of silk-based building skins by controlling the mechanical and physical properties of spatial structures inherent in their microstructures using multi-axes fabrication. The method offers construction without assemblies such that material properties vary locally to accommodate for structural and environmental requirements. This approach stands in contrast to functional assemblies and kinetically actuated facades which require a great deal of energy to operate, and are typically maintained by global control. Such material architectures could simultaneously bear structural load, change their transparency so as to control light levels within a spatial compartment (building or vehicle), and open and close embedded pores so as to ventilate a space.

The digitally reconfigurable surface is a pin matrix apparatus for directly creating rigid 3D surfaces from a computer-aided design (CAD) input. A digital design is uploaded into the device, and a grid of thousands of tiny pins–much like the popular pin-art toy–are actuated to form the desired surface. A rubber sheet is held by vacuum pressure onto the tops of the pins to smooth out the surface formed by them; this strong surface can then be used for industrial forming operations, simple resin casting, and many other applications. The novel phase-changing electronic clutch array allows the device to have independent position control over thousands of discrete pins with only a single motorized 'push plate,' lowering the complexity and manufacturing cost of this type of device. Research is ongoing into new actuation techniques to further lower the cost and increase the surface resolution of this technology.

Sockets –- the cup-shaped devices that attach an amputated limb to a lower-limb prosthesis –- are made through unscientific, artisanal methods that do not have repeatable quality and comfort from one individual with amputation to the next. The FitSocket project aims to identify the correlation between leg tissue properties and the design of a comfortable socket. We accomplish this by creating a robotic socket measurement device called the FitSocket which can directly measure tissue properties. With this data, we can rapid-prototype test sockets and socket molds in order to make rigid, spatially variable stiffness, and spatially/temporally variable stiffness sockets.

Inspired by the success of the fusible alloy clutch utilized in the digitally reconfigurable surface actuation system, we have been looking into the possibility of abstracting this concept into three dimensions, using fusible alloy to attach spheres or other particles together. In a simple case this involves plating micro-milli spheres (metal, plastic, glass, etc.) in a solder wetting material (tin, silver, gold, copper, etc.) and then plating that coating with a low temperature solder alloy so that it can be reversibly “sintered” to adjacent particles. In a more complex case, particles would have internal electronics that turn on or off (by heating) bond plates, resulting in a more “atom-like” particle that could self-assemble or self-disassemble.

French for "single shell," Monocoque stands for a construction technique that supports structural load using an object's external skin. Contrary to the traditional design of building skins that distinguish between internal structural frameworks and non-bearing skin elements, this approach promotes heterogeneity and differentiation of material properties. The project demonstrates the notion of a structural skin using a Voronoi pattern, the density of which corresponds to multi-scalar loading conditions. The distribution of shear-stress lines and surface pressure is embodied in the allocation and relative thickness of the vein-like elements built into the skin. Its innovative 3D printing technology provides for the ability to print parts and assemblies made of multiple materials within a single build, as well as to create composite materials that present preset combinations of mechanical properties.

The PCB Origami project is an innovative concept for printing digital materials and creating 3D objects with Rigid-flex PCBs and pick and place machines. These machines allow printing of digital electronic materials, while controlling the location and property of each of the components printed. By combining this technology with Rigid-flex PCB and computational origami, it is possible to create from a single sheet of PCB almost any 3D shape that is already embedded with electronics, to produce a finished product with that will be both structural and functional.

Raycounting is a method for generating customized light-shading constructions by registering the intensity and orientation of light rays within a given environment. 3D surfaces of double curvature are the result of assigning light parameters to flat planes. The algorithm calculates the intensity, position and direction of one, or multiple, light sources placed in a given environment and assigns local curvature values to each point in space corresponding to the reference plane and the light dimension. Light performance analysis tools are reconstructed programmatically to allow for morphological synthesis based on intensity, frequency and polarization of light parameters as defined by the user.

Hydrogels are crosslink polymers that are capable of absorbing great amount of water. They have been studied during the last 50 years, largely due to their hydrophilic character at ambient temperatures, which make them biocompatible and attractive for various biological applications. Nevertheless, in our project, we are interested in their hydrophilic-hydrophobic phase-transition, occurring slightly above room temperature. We investigate the mechanical and optical transformations at this phase transition – namely their swelling, permeability, and optical transmission modification – as enabling ‘responsive’ or ‘passive’ dynamics for future product design.

In most “drop-on-demand” inkjet control schemes, a superheated bubble of liquid is used to propel a droplet or a piezoelectric crystal physically squeezes out a droplet at high speeds. These models rely on a reservoir of print media that is always ‘open’ on one end for the droplet outlet. This makes the design of the system difficult for two reasons: the pore has to be small enough to hold back low-viscosity liquids by surface tension alone (~10um diameter), and the open nozzle leaves the ink exposed and prone to drying out. We propose a new deposition mechanism based around a nozzle that is ‘plugged’ by an actuating ‘stopper’ made of shape memory wire backed by a positive internal fluid pressure. When the wire is actuated, the stopper is removed and the pressure of the fluid pushes one or more droplets out until the stopper is replaced.