Work

Computational Design and Single-Wire Sensing of 3D Printed Objects with Integrated Capacitive Touchpoints

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Producing interactive 3D printed objects currently requires laborious 3D design and post-instrumentation with off-the-shelf electronics. Multi-material 3D printing using conductive PLA presents opportunities to mitigate these challenges. We present a computational design pipeline that embeds multiple capacitive touchpoints into any 3D model that has a closed mesh without self-intersection. With our pipeline, users define touchpoints on the 3D object’s surface to indicate interactive regions. Our pipeline then automatically generates a conductive path to connect the touch regions. This path is optimized to output unique resistor-capacitor delays when each region is touched, resulting in all regions being able to be sensed through a double-wire or single-wire connection. We illustrate our approach’s utility with five computational and sensing performance evaluations (achieving 93.35% mean accuracy for single-wire) and six application examples. Our sensing technique supports existing uses (e.g., prototyping) and highlights the growing promise to produce interactive devices entirely with 3D printing.

Source: ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF)

DOI: 10.1145/3745778.3766650

Authors: S. Sandra Bae, Takanori Fujiwara, Danielle Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Michael L. Rivera

Institutions: University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, Linköping University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Language: English

Topic: Interactive and Immersive Displays

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: National Science Foundation, National Renewable Energy Laboratory