Foldio: Digital Fabrication of Interactive and Shape-Changing Objects With Foldable Printed Electronics

Foldios are foldable interactive objects with embedded input sensing and output capabilities. Foldios combine the strengths of folding for thin, lightweight and shapechanging objects with the strengths of thin-film printed electronics for embedded sensing and output. To enable designers and end-users to create highly custom interactive foldable objects, we contribute a new design and fabrication approach. It allows to design the foldable object in a standard 3D environment and to add interactive high-level controls, removing the need to manually design a fold pattern and low-level circuits for printed electronics. Second, we contribute a set of printable user interface controls for touch input and display output on folded objects. Moreover, we contribute controls for sensing and actuation of shapechangeable objects. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach with a variety of interactive objects that have been fabricated with this framework.

@Article { OSHS15,
  author       = "Olberding, Simon and Soto Ortega, Sergio and Hildebrandt, Klaus and Steimle, Jürgen",
  title        = "Foldio: Digital Fabrication of Interactive and Shape-Changing Objects With Foldable Printed Electronics",
  journal      = "ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)",
  year         = "2015",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2015/OSHS15"
}