This work explores soft technologies in computational fabrication: ways of creating with materials that are flexible, dynamic, and/or uncertain. Soft fabrication systems can be built to work with unusual materials, and to adapt to current and futures needs; they can be appropriate to a wide variety of contexts, including those outside of industrial and production work such as materials research labs or personal creative practice.

I develop the lens of "softness" through a combination of technical systems development and design inquiry, resulting in computational fabrication systems which explore softness at the levels of physical materials, contexts of use, and the workflows that bridge between them. In documenting the individual systems, I provide a number of supporting contributions, including techniques for producing complex mechanisms with machine knitting, demonstrations of inexpensive and easily deployable camera-based sensing for fabrication tasks, and insights from creative practitioners. Uniting the findings from these, I construct a conceptual frame and a set of system-building tactics that can be used to create flexible and adaptable computational fabrication systems, with implications for how complex materials can be used, by whom, and in what contexts.

198 pages

Thesis Committee:
Scott E. Hudson (Co-Chair)
Lining Yao (Co-Chair) (Carnegie Mellon University/University for California, Berkeley)
Jessica Hammer
Mark D. Gross (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Brad A. Myers, Head, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Martial Hebert, Dean, School of Computer Science

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