Computational Design of Actuated Deformable Characters

 

We present a method for fabrication-oriented design of actuated deformable characters that allows a user to automatically create physical replicas of digitally designed characters using rapid manufacturing technologies.

July 21, 2013
ACM SIGGRAPH 2013

 

Authors

Melina Skouras (Disney Research/ETH Joint PhD)

Bernhard Thomaszewski (Disney Research)

Stelian Coros (Disney Research)

Bernd Bickel (Disney Research)

Markus Gross (Disney Research/ETH Zurich)

Computational Design of Actuated Deformable Characters

Abstract

Given a deformable character and a set of target poses as input, our method computes a small set of actuators along with their locations on the surface and optimizes the internal material distribution such that the resulting character exhibits the desired deformation behavior. We approach this problem with a dedicated algorithm that combines finite-element analysis, sparse regularization, and constrained optimization. We validate our pipeline on a set of two- and three-dimensional example characters and present results in simulation and physically-fabricated prototypes.

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