Paper Mechatronics investigates how young people learn engineering with paper mechatronics, creating working devices - machines, robots, toys, automata, kinetic artwork - using paper as the building material, and how novices develop adaptive expertise through this creative and powerful medium. The project pioneers paper mechatronics through novel "smart" crafting tools for paper, innovative design software and instructional resources. Paper mechatronics introduces a new genre of engineering education by extending traditional children's papercrafts with novel, accessible, computationally-enhanced tools and materials to create original and compelling artifacts. The project furthers a style of engineering education that is interdisciplinary (integrating elements of programming, electronics, and mechanical design) and realistic, yet also playful and respectful of children's creativity.
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Publications
- Hyunjoo Oh, Sherry Hsi, Michael Eisenberg, and Mark D. Gross. 2018. Paper mechatronics: present and future. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 389-395. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3202761 (Trondheim, Norway – June, 2018).
