Mechanical motion added to 3D-printed creations

The methods are said to apply to two specific types of characters – planar mechanical characters that are similar to shadow puppets, and linkage-based characters formed by networks of rigid links and hinged joints. In either case, the researchers have developed tools that lead the user in designing mechanisms that will achieve a desired cyclical motion.

The same team of researchers, including scientists from Disney Research Zurich, ETH Zurich and Columbia University, developed both methods and will present them this week at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques held in Canada.

‘The machinery for fabricating personalised mechanical toys, artefacts and even robots is becoming widely available, thanks to 3D printing,’ said Bernhard Thomaszewski, a Disney Research Zurich associate research scientist. ‘But without the assistance of specialized software, designing such animated characters is a virtually impossible task for casual users.’

In July 2014 the team presented ChaCra, their interactive system for designing planar mechanical characters. These are inspired by shadow puppets, which are rigidly articulated and whose motion is controlled through a number of rods. In these characters, however, the rods aren’t controlled by a puppeteer behind a screen, but are animated by a single actuator.