ACME Creativity Machine Environment (ACME) Lab, directed by Ellen Do, researches computational tools for design, creativity, cognition, tangible and embedded interaction, and computing for health and wellness. Along with the explicit name for which the acronym stands, Do likes ACME because of its lofty connotations and its association to the Looney Tunes fictional organization, A Company that Makes Everything.
A key ethos for the lab is the belief that everyone can be creative because everyone has the ability to make things. Human beings are wonderfully intricate pieces of machinery. In the effort to understand human intelligence and creativity (cognition), or how people design everything (from their meals to furniture, house, or software programs), we build models and machines (physical, digital, and interactive) to attempt to explain and simulate, or to explore the boundaries of these ideas that are inside black boxes.
ACME Lab Projects
ACME Lab Director
ACME Lab Associated Researchers
ACME Lab Interns
ACME Lab Alumni
In the news
Publications
Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Pattie Maes, Florian `Floyd' Mueller, and Nathan Semertzidis. 2023. Designing the Human-Machine Symbiosis (Dagstuhl Seminar 23212). In: Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 13, Issue 5, pp. 136-164, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. (November 27, 2023).
Saad Elbeleidy, Terran Mott, Dan Liu, Ellen Do, Elizabeth Reddy, and Tom Williams. 2023 “Beyond the Session: Centering Teleoperators in Socially Assistive Robot-Child Interactions Reveals the Bigger Picture.” In: Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, CSCW2, Article 326. (October 2023).
Rishi Vanukuru and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023 "Exploring the use of Mobile Devices as a Bridge for Cross-Reality Collaboration." In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct). (Sydney, Australia, October 16-20, 2023).
Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Torin Hopkins, Shih-Yu Ma, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. "Investigating the Effects of Limited Field of View on Jamming Experience in Extended Reality." In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct). (Sydney, Australia, October 16-20, 2023).
Torin Hopkins, Rishi Vanukuru, Suibi Che Chuan Weng, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. "Networking AI-Driven Virtual Musicians in Extended Reality." In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct). (Sydney, Australia, October 16-20, 2023).
Rishi Vanukuru, Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Krithik Zanjan, Torin Hopkins, Amy Banic, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023 "DualStream: Spatially Sharing Selves and Surroundings using Mobile Devices and Augmented Reality". In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). (Sydney, Australia, October 16-20, 2023).
Ruhan Yang and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2024. "Let's Build a Traffic Light: Teaching Physical Computing to Children with EdBoard." In: Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1929.
Ruhan Yang and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2024. PaBo Bot: Paper Box Robots for Everyone. In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1158–1162. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610978.3640696
Ruhan Yang. 2024. "Paper Modular Robot: Circuit, Sensation Feedback, and 3D Geometry." In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY.
Yuzhen Zhang, Ruixiang Han, Ran Zhou, Peter Gyory, Clement Zheng, Patrick C. Shih, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Malte F Jung, Wendy Ju, and Daniel Leithinger. 2024. Wizard of Props: Mixed Reality Prototyping with Physical Props to Design Responsive Environments. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 47, 1–15.
Torin Hopkins, Suibi Che Chuan Weng, Rishi Vanukuru, Sasha Novack, Chad Tobin, Emma Wenzel, Amy Banic, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, “XR Jam: Design Considerations for Music Networking with AI in XR.” In: 2024 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and eXtended and Virtual Reality (AIxVR). (Jan 17-19, 2024)
Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Yan-Ming Chiou, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do, “Dream Mesh: A Speech-to-3D Model Generative Pipeline in Mixed Reality,” in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and eXtended and Virtual Reality (AIxVR), (Jan 17-19 2024)
S. S. Bae, T. Fujiwara, A. Ynnerman, E. Y. -L. Do, M. L. Rivera and D. A. Szafir, "A Computational Design Pipeline to Fabricate Sensing Network Physicalizations," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 913-923, Jan. 2024, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3327198.
Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Pattie Maes, Florian `Floyd' Mueller, and Nathan Semertzidis. Designing the Human-Machine Symbiosis (Dagstuhl Seminar 23212). In Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 13, Issue 5, pp. 136-164, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (27 Nov, 2023) https://doi.org/10.4230/DagRep.13.5.136
Rishi Vanukuru and Ellen Yi-Luen Do, "Exploring the use of Mobile Devices as a Bridge for Cross-Reality Collaboration," 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 16-20 October 2023, Sydney, Australia
Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Torin Hopkins, Shih-Yu Ma, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, "Investigating the Effects of Limited Field of View on Jamming Experience in Extended Reality," 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 16-20 October 2023, Sydney, Australia, 2023
Torin Hopkins, Rishi Vanukuru, Suibi Che Chuan Weng, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, "Networking AI-Driven Virtual Musicians in Extended Reality," 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 16-20 October 2023, Sydney, Australia, 2023
Rishi Vanukuru, Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Krithik Zanjan, Torin Hopkins, Amy Banic, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, "DualStream: Spatially Sharing Selves and Surroundings using Mobile Devices and Augmented Reality," 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Sydney, Australia (16-20 October 2023).
Saad Elbeleidy, Terran Mott, Dan Liu, Ellen Do, Elizabeth Reddy, and Tom Williams, “Beyond the Session: Centering Teleoperators in Socially Assistive Robot-Child Interactions Reveals the Bigger Picture.” . 2023. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, CSCW2, Article 326 (October 2023).
Bae, S. Sandra and Vanukuru, Rishi and Yang, Ruhan and Gyory, Peter and Zhou, Ran and Do, Ellen Yi-Luen and Szafir, Danielle Albers,” Cultivating Visualization Literacy for Children Through Curiosity and Play," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 29, no. 1 (January 2023).
S. Sandra Bae, Takanori Fujiwara, Anders Ynnerman, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Michael L. Rivera, Danielle Albers Szafir. 2023. "A Computational Design Pipeline to Fabricate Sensing Network Physicalizations". In: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (October 2023).
Torin Hopkins, Emily Doherty, Netta Ofer, Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Peter Gyory, Chad Tobin, Leanne Hirschfield, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Stringesthesia: Dynamically Shifting Musical Agency Between Audience and Performer Based on Trust in an Interactive and Improvised Performance”. In: Proceedings of Audio Mostly 2023. (August 30 - September 1, 2023).
Torin Hopkins, Alvin Jude, Greg Phillips, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Virtual AI Jam: AI-Driven Virtual Musicians for Human-in-the-Loop Musical Improvisation“. In: Proceedings of AIMC 2023. (August 29, 2023.
Torin Hopkins, Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Rhythmic Conversations”. In: Proceedings of AIMC 2023. (August 29, 2023).
S. Sandra Bae, Takanori Fujiwara, Anders Ynnerman, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Michael L. Rivera, Danielle Albers Szafir. 2023. “A Computational Design Pipeline to Fabricate Sensing Network Physicalizations”. In: ArXiv (August 9, 2023).
Krithik Ranjan, Peter Gyory, Michael L. Rivera, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Cartoonimator: A Low-cost, Paper-based Animation Kit for Computational Thinking”. In: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC '23) (Chicago, IL, June 19-23, 2023).
Peter Gyory, S. Sandra Bae, Ruhan Yang, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, and Clement Zheng. 2023. “Marking Material Interactions with Computer Vision”. In: CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).
Ruhan Yang, Krithik Ranjan, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Fabricating Paper Circuits with Subtractive Processing”. In: CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).
Clement Zheng, Peter Gyory, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2023. “Facilitating Physical Computing with Computer Vision Markers”. In: CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).
Clement Zheng, Bo Han, Xin Liu, Laura Devendorf, Hans Tan, and Ching Chiuan Yen. "Crafting Interactive Circuits on Glazed Ceramic Ware". In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).
Suibi Che–Chuan Weng, Torin Hopkins, Rishi Vanukuru, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic, Daniel Leithinger, and Ellen Yi–Luen Do. 2023. “How Field of View Affects Awareness of an Avatar During a Musical Task in Augmented Reality”. In: 2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (Shanghai, China, March 25-29, 2023).
Hopkins Torin, Weng Suibi Che Chuan, Vanukuru Rishi, Wenzel Emma A., Banic Amy, Gross Mark D., Do Ellen Yi-Luen. 2022. "AR Drum Circle: Real-Time Collaborative Drumming in AR". Frontiers in Virtual Reality, Vol. 3 (August 19, 2022).
S. Sandra Bae, Rishi Vanukuru, Ruhan Yang, Peter Gyory, Ran Zhou, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Danielle Albers Szafir. 2022. "Cultivating Visualization Literacy for Children Through Curiosity and Play." In: Proceedings of IEEE VIS 2022, (Oct.16-21, 2022—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).
S. Sandra Bae. 2022. "Towards a Deeper Understanding of Data and Materiality." In: Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).
Peter Gyory. 2022. "Creating Platforms to Support Craft and Creativity in Game Controller Design." In: Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery. (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).
Peter Gyory, Perry Y Owens, Matthew Bethancourt, Amy Banic, Clement Zheng, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2022. “Build Your Own Arcade Machine with Tinycade.” In: 14th ACM conference on Creativity & Cognition. (June 20-23, 2022—Venice, Italy).
T. Hopkins, S. C. -C. Weng, R. Vanukuru, E. Wenzel, A. Banic and E. Y. -L. Do, "How Late is Too Late? Effects of Network Latency on Audio-Visual Perception During AR Remote Musical Collaboration." In: 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (Christchurch, New Zealand—March12-16, 2022).
S. Sandra Bae, Clement Zheng, Mary Etta West, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Samuel Huron, Danielle Albers Szafir (2022). "Making Data Tangible: A Cross-disciplinary Design Space for Data Physicalization." Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. (April 30 - May 5, 2022—New Orleans, USA).
Sandra Bae, Ruhan Yang, Peter Gyory, Julia Uhr, Danielle Albers Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Touching Information with DIY Paper Charts & AR Markers." In: IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children (24 June 2021).
Torin Hopkins, Rishi Vanukuru, Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, Amy Banic, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2022. "Augmented Personification of Intelligent Music Tools for Creativity and Collaboration." In: ACM CHI 2022 Workshop 47: Intelligent Music Interfaces: When Interactive Assistance and Augmentation Meet Musical Instruments. (New Orleans, LA—May 1, 2022).
Rishi Vanukuru, Amarnath Murugan, Jayesh Pillai, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Designing and Studying Social Interactions in Shared Virtual Spaces using Mobile Augmented Reality." In: ACM CHI 2022 Workshop 46: Social Presence in Virtual Event Spaces. (New Orleans, LA—May 1, 2022).
Chris Hill, Ruojia Sun, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2022. “What to Design Next: Actuated Materials and Soft Robots for Children,” ACM CHI 2022 Workshop 39: Actuated Materials and Soft Robotics Strategies for Human Computer Interaction Design. pdf (New Orleans, LA—May 1, 2022).
Torin Hopkins, Peter Pascente, Wayne Seltzer, Kellie Masterson, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2021. "The Jam Station: Gamifying Collaborative Musical Experiences Through Algorithmic Assessment.: In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery (Salzburg, Austria (virtual)–Feb. 14-19, 2021).
Luo, Zhiqiang, Ponraj Durairaj, Cheng Mun Lau, Yuichiro Katsumoto, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Ahmad Sapon Bin Zainuddin, Kensaku, Kawauchi, "Gamification of Upper Limb Virtual Rehabilitation in Post Stroke Elderly Using SilverTune- A Multi-sensory Tactile Musical Assistive System." In: 2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Virtual Reality (ICVR) (2021).
S. Sandra Bae and Mary Etta West. "Cyborg Crafts: Second SKIN (Soft Keen INteraction)." In" Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery. (Salzburg, Austria (virtual) Feb. 14-19, 2021). [Craft Award]
Torin Hopkins, S. Sandra Bae, Julia Uhr, Clement Zheng, Amy Banic and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2021. "User Interfaces in Smart Cities." In: Handbook of Smart Cities. Springer Publishing Company, Inc. (Feb 16, 2021)
Clement Zheng, Peter Gyory, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. "Tangible Interfaces with Printed Paper Markers." In: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’20). Association for Computing Machinery (Eindhoven, Netherlands (virtual) – July 6-20, 2020) [Honorable Mention Award for Best Pictorial Paper] & [Honorable Mention Award for Best Demonstration]
Sarah Beemer, Zak Boston, April Bukoski, Daniel Chen, Princess Dickens, Andrew Gerlach, Torin Hopkins, Parth Anand Jawale, Chris Koski, Akanksha Malhotra, Piyush Mishra, Saliha Muradoglu, Lan Sang, Tyler Short, Sagarika Shreevastava, Elizabeth Spaulding, Testumichi Umada, Beilei Xiang, Changbing Yang, Mans Hulden. 2020. Linguist vs. Machine: Rapid Development of Finite-State Morphological Grammars, in Proceedings of the 17th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology, July 2020, 162-170. (Seattle, Washington (virtual)–July 10, 2020).
Ruhan Yang, Cody Candler, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. EdBoard: An Educational Breadboard. In Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference 2020 (IDC'20). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3397617.3397832 (London, England (virtual)–June 17-24, 2020).
Torin Hopkins and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2020. Jam Tabs: A Color Based Notation System for Novice Improvisation. In Proceedings of International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR'20) (Hamburg, Germany–May 12-14, 2020).
Ryo Suzuki, Hooman Hedayati, Clement Zheng, James Bohn, Daniel Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Mark D Gross, and Daniel Leithinger. 2020. "RoomShift: Room-scale Dynamic Haptics for VR with Furniture-moving Swarm Robots." In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). ACM (Honolulu, Hawaii (virtual) – April 25-30, 2020).
Amy Banic, Erik Horwitz and Clement Zheng. 2020. "Kinetic Skin: Feasibility and Implementation of Bare Skin Tracking of Hand and Body Joints for 3D User Interfaces." In: 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (Atlanta, Georgia–March 22-26, 2020).
Junnan Yu, Clement Zheng, Mariana Aki Tamashiro, Christopher Gonzalez-millan, and Ricarose Roque. "CodeAttach: Engaging Children in Computational Thinking Through Physical Play Activities." In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery. (Sydney, Australia – Feb. 9-12, 2020).
Ryo Suzuki, Clement Zheng, Yasuaki Kakehi, Tom Yeh, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Mark D. Gross, Daniel Leithinger. "ShapeBots: Shape-changing Swarm Robots." In: Proceedings of The 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'19). (New Orleans, LA—Oct. 20-23, 2019).
Ryosuke Nakayama, Ryo Suzuki, Satoshi Nakamaru, Ryuma Niiyama, Yoshihiro Kawahara, and Yasuaki Kakehi. "MorphIO: Entirely Soft Sensing and Actuation Modules for Programming Shape Changes through Tangible Interaction." In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19). [Best Paper Award].
Peter Gyory, Clement Zheng, Daniel Leithinger, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "HOT SWAP: Probing Embodied Game Interfaces With Reconfigurable Controllers." In: Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion (DIS '19 Companion). ACM (San Diego, CA, USA—June 23-28, 2019).
Clement Zheng, HyunJoo Oh, Laura Devendorf, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Sensing Kirigami." In: Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19). (San Diego, CA, USA — June 23 - 28, 2019). [Best Pictorial Award].
Patrycja Zdziarska, Felix A. Epp, Walther Jensen, Mark D Gross, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Hooze: A Kinetic Fashion Accessory for Touch and Play." In: Proceedings of Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI’19). (Tempe, Arizona, USA—March 17-20, 2019).
Clement Zheng, Jeeeun Kim, Daniel Leithinger, Mark D Gross, & Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Mechamagnets: Designing and Fabricating Haptic and Functional Physical Inputs with Embedded Magnets." In: Proceedings of Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI’19). (Tempe, Arizona, USA—March 17-20, 2019).
Denise Powell, Peter Gyory, Ricarose Roque, and Annie Bruns. The Telling Board: An Interactive Storyboarding Tool for Children. In" Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, (IDC '18). (Trondheim, Norway – June 19-22, 2018).
Jeeeun Kim, Clement Zheng, Haruki Takahashi, Mark Gross, Daniel Ashbrook and Tom Yeh. Expanding & Supporting Workflows Towards Compositional 3D Printing. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication, (SCF, '18). (Cambridge, Massachusetts – June 17-19, 2018).
Clement Zheng and Ellen Yi-Luen Do. Mechamagnets: Tactile Mechanisms with Embedded Magnets, In: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '18). (Stockholm, Sweden, March 18-21, 2018).
Clement Zheng. 2018. Unfolding an Industrial Design Approach to Physical Computing. In: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '18). (Stockholm, Sweden – March 18-21, 2018).
James Hallam, Clement Zheng, Noah Posner, Heydn Ericson, Matthew Swarts, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2017. The Light Orchard: an immersive display platform for collaborative tangible interaction. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp '17). (Maui, Hawaii, Sept. 11-15, 2017).