Publication | ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016
RetroFab
A Design Tool for Retrofitting Physical Interfaces using Actuators, Sensors and 3D Printing
Abstract
RetroFab: A Design Tool for Retrofitting Physical Interfaces using Actuators, Sensors and 3D Printing
Raf Ramakers, Fraser Anderson, Tovi Grossman, George Fitzmaurice
ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016
We present RetroFab, an end-to-end design and fabrication environment that allows non-experts to retrofit physical interfaces. Our approach allows for changing the layout and behavior of physical interfaces. Unlike customizing software interfaces, physical interfaces are often challenging to adapt because of their rigidity. With RetroFab, a new physical interface is designed that serves as a proxy interface for the legacy controls that are now operated using actuators. RetroFab makes this concept of retrofitting devices available to non-experts by automatically generating an enclosure structure from an annotated 3D scan. This enclosure structure holds together actuators, sensors as well as components for the redesigned interface. To allow retrofitting a wide variety of legacy devices, the RetroFab design tool comes with a toolkit of 12 components. We demonstrate the versatility and novel opportunities of our approach by retrofitting five domestic objects and exploring their use cases. Additionally a preliminary study reports on the experience of retrofitting devices with RetroFab.
Download publicationRelated Resources
2013
Skillometers: Reflective Widgets that Motivate and Help Users to Improve PerformanceApplications typically provide ways for expert users to increase their…
2008
EM-Cube: Cube-shaped, Self-Reconfigurable Robots Sliding on Structure SurfaceMany previous works simulate cube-shaped modular robots to explain…
2007
Dynamic 2D Patterns for Shading 3D ScenesWe describe a new way to render 3D scenes in a variety of…
2020
Workflow Graphs: A Computational Model of Collective Task Strategies for 3D Design SoftwareThis paper introduces Workflow graphs, or W-graphs, which encode how…
Get in touch
Something pique your interest? Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about Autodesk Research, our projects, people, and potential collaboration opportunities.
Contact us