Research Open House projects detailed below are grouped by labs. Click on lab logos to view projects.
Directed by Ellen Yi-Luen Do
Stringesthesia
By: Torin Hopkins, Che Chuan Suibi Weng, Netta Ofer, Peter Gyory, Emily Doherty, Chad Tobin
Associated researchers: Leanne Hirshfield & Ellen Do
Location: Floor 2B, Rm. Black Box Experimental Studio
Stringesthesia is a uniquely interactive solo guitar performance by PhD student Torin Hopkins set for Saturday, October 22 at 7 p.m. During the show, Hopkins will be hooked up to infrared brain scanning technology that has been previously calibrated to gauge his level of trust moment by moment. The performance space also includes eight electronic drumming stations for audience members to play along with Hopkins. However, the number of stations that are active during the show depends on Hopkins’ fluctuating level of trust—the more trusting he is, the more stations are activated. Each station also has a panel of eight colored buttons, each of which corresponds to a musical chord. As more people join the jam session and more colors are selected, Hopkins is allowed to play a wider range of chords. So as Hopkins’ trust grows and more audience participation is permitted, he is given more latitude for musical improvisation. During ATLAS Research Open House, visitors will have the chance to observe the technology in action and ask Hopkins and his team questions about the live performance taking place the following day. (colorado.edu/atlas/events)
Tiny Cade
By: Peter Gyory
Associated researchers: Perry Owens, Clement Zheng, Ellen Do
Labs: ACME Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 229
Tinycade is a platform designed to help game designers build their own mini arcade games by hand, crafting functional game controllers out of everyday materials such as cardboard and toothpicks. By utilizing computer vision markers, we can create a variety of inputs without the need for wires. During the ATLAS Research Open House, two games will be available to demonstrate the controllers that Tinycade supports.
Beholder
By: Peter Gyory
Associated researchers: Krithik Ranjan, Clement Zheng, Ellen Do
Labs: ACME Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 229
Beholder is a tool that enables makers to create functional interfaces out of just paper. By utilizing computer vision (CV), we detect markers which can be easily printed on paper, then map the detected changes in those markers to keyboard output. We will be presenting a prototype of the programming interface for Beholder, which takes care of the technical steps of setting up computer vision and emulating the corresponding keyboard strokes, allowing designers to focus on building unique interfaces from scratch.
NSF
The Cross-Reality/XR Playground
By: Rishi Vanukuru
Associated researchers: Suibi Weng, Torin Hopkins, Krithik Ranjan
Labs: ACME Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 229
The Cross-Reality/XR Playground is an application that showcases some of the latest AR/VR research ideas from the ACME lab. By developing collaborative platforms that connect PCs and mobile phones with AR and VR headsets, we hope to make spatial computing more accessible to people all over the world. In this demo, you will be able to work with friends on very different devices, while collectively solving puzzles and interacting with 3D content.
Ericsson Research
Paper Robot Building Kit
By: Ruhan Yang
Associated researchers: Krithik Ranjan, Ellen Do
Labs: ACME Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 229
Paper Robot Building Kit is a system that facilitates rapid building and open-ended creation of paper robots. This demonstration features the latest kit, the Unit Robot, which includes an LED unit, motor unit, and speaker unit, enabling people to build modular paper robots. We will also be handing out some Halloween-themed paper circuit-building kits.
Holo Jam
By: Che Chuan Suibi Weng
Associated researchers: Torin Hopkins, Chad Tobin, Amy Banic
Labs: ACME Lab
Location: Floor 1, Rm. Lobby
Holo Jam investigates how field of view affects the ability to notice an avatar during a musical task in Extended Reality/XR. In this experiment, we compare the musical experience and social presence with avatars in different situations of XR scenes. We have two additional hardware sets-up: Hologram and Nreal glasses. In each setup, we have two contexts. One is with visual notification, and the other is without it. Participants need to answer whether they notice the XR avatars' gestures during a drum circle activity in both setups and contexts.
Directed by Grace Leslie
Brain-Body Music Performance
By: Grace Leslie
Lab: Brain-Music Lab
Location: Floor 2 Rm. 234
Vessels is a brain-body performance practice developed by Grace Leslie that combines flute and electronics improvisation with EEG (electroencephalogram brainwave data) sonification. In this piece, Leslie records raw electroencephalogram (EEG), electrodermal activity (EDA) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and uses them to actuate flute and voice samples she previously recorded.
Directed by Carson Bruns
Permanent, Re-Writable Tattoos
By: Carson Bruns
Associated researchers: Jesse Butterfield
Lab: Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 234
MAGIC (microscopic adapto-generative intradermal colorant) tattoo pigments can be switched on and off between invisible and colored states when exposed to different colors of light. MAGIC pigments can be tattooed just like any ordinary tattoo ink to create an "etch-a-sketch" tattoo that can be written and erased repeatedly with nothing but colored lights.
Robotic System for Automating Organic Chemistry
By: Kailey Shara
Associated researchers: Carson Bruns
Lab: Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 234
A chemical synthesis robot for organic chemistry that aims to automate the most tedious and time-consuming lab operations required in organic chemistry: weighing solids, volumetrically dispensing liquids, running reactions and purification. Many advances in medicine, energy production and space exploration depend on scientists and engineers inventing new molecules and materials. Unfortunately, synthesizing molecules remains a time-consuming and very manual task, creating a significant bottleneck to scientific progress. While some chemistry automation solutions exist, their practical use has limitations, especially for one-off chemical prototyping. This work aims address this need, providing an economical laboratory automation robot for organic chemistry.
NSF
Directed by Mirela Alistar
Alganyl Biodegradable Plastic
By: Fiona Bell
Associated researchers: Latifa Al Naimi and Ella McQuaid
Lab: Living Matter Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 206
Alganyl is a highly customizable and accessible bioplastic made from marine algae that acts like vinyl fabric but is recyclable and compostable in approximately 60 days. Stemming from a broad exploration of bioplastics' physical properties, this project explores ways of creating everything from biodegradable sensors to DIY clothing from Alganyl. The work has a provisional patent and has been published in TEI'21 and Journal Diseña.
ReClaym our Compost
By: Fiona Bell
Associated researchers: Netta Ofer
Lab: Living Matter Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 206
ReClaym is a sustainable and personal clay-like biomaterial made from our composted food waste. By using our composted food waste, ReClaym reflects the makers' ever-changing relationship with food, resulting in an inconsistent and imperfect material. In turn, we use a corresponding practice for working with Reclaym called Intimate Making to build a collaborative relationship with ReClaym that supports such inconsistencies and leads us to create artifacts that we are emotionally invested in.
SCOBY Breastplate
By: Fiona Bell
Associated researchers: Derrek Chow, Hyelin Choi
Lab: Living Matter Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 206
The SCOBY Breastplate is a sustainable, interactive wearable material that was slowly grown and fabricated from kombucha SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) biofilm over the course of 13 weeks. When worn, LEDs embedded within the SCOBY breastplate produce different light responses in reaction to the wearer being hugged, tapped or brushed. Through this project, we challenge the fail-fast and rapid prototyping trends that inhabit creative technology research, and instead explore what it means to design at the pace of another living organism.
Designing Direct Interactions with Bioluminescent Algae
By: Netta Ofer
Associated researchers: Fiona Bell, Mirela Alistar
Lab: Living Matter Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 206
This project explores how we might engage and interact with Dinoflagellates, bioluminescent algae. Leveraging the Dinoflagellates’ natural mechanism of producing a blueish glow when exposed to oxygen, we designed movement-based interactions where the human physically stimulates or moves the Dinoflagellates. Through games or directly interacting with these delicate beings, we reflect on what designing with living organisms should take into account in order to honor and care for such nonhuman entities.
BioFibers
By: Eldy Lazaro Vasquez
Associated researchers: Michael Rivera, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf
Lab: Living Matter Lab & Unstable Design Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 207
Results of a series of explorations for converting gelatin by-product liquid solutions into spinnable textile fibers. This exploration used wet spinning as a process to make gelatin-based fibers.
Directed by Daniel Leithinger
Together Apart
By: Casey Hunt
Associated researchers: Daniel Leithinger, Jason Yip, Amanda Hyunh, Allison Druin
Lab: THING Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 231
Together Apart is an interface co-designed with children from KidsTeam at the University of Washington that involves a custom graphical user interface, internet connected robots and 3D printed robot accessories to support collaborative design over video calls. KidsTeam supports the development of new technology for children by teams that include adults and children working as as equal stakeholders in the design process. Projects often lasts several years.
TactorBots
By: Ran Zhou
Associated researchers: Zachary Schwemler, Akshay Baweja, Harpreet Sareen, Casey Hunt, Mathieu Halpin, Daniel Leithinger
Lab: THING Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 231
TactorBots is an open-hardware and open-source haptic toolkit for designing emotional robotic touch. It contains eight plug-and-play wearable modules that render 1 Degree-of-freedom servo-driven touch feedback for performing various social gestures. A web graphical user interface allows users to easily control and modify various parameter settings to create different robotic tactile behaviors and store or export the touch patterns to implement in their own applications. The aim of this project is to expand the design space by leveraging the ambiguity and otherness of the robotic touch to provoke alternative interpretations and uncover new design opportunities.
HECTARE
By: Suibi Che Chuan Weng, David Hunter, Daniel Leithinger
Associated researchers: Ben Erickson, Pritalee Kadam
Lab: THING Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 231
HECTARE uses a cutting-edge mix of VR, motion capture, physical props and robotics to create an immersive training experience. HECTARE is a NASA funded project working with Diamond Age Technologies to develop astronaut training simulations for future missions to the Moon and Mars. In this VR simulation, you are an astronaut going to visit the Moon. Your mission is to collect rock samples and load them onto a rover to take back to the habitat for analysis.
NASA / Diamond Age Technologies
EmotiTactor
By: Ran Zhou
Associated researchers: Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, Daniel Leithinger
Lab: THING Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 231
EmotiTactor investigates how designers explore emotional robotic touch in a designerly way. To enable designers to easily generate and modify various types of affective touch for conveying emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, etc.), we developed a platform consisting of a hand-made wood robotic tactor interface and a software design tool. When conducting an elicitation study with eleven interaction designers, we discovered common patterns for the design decisions of gesture, texture, and parameter settings for different emotions. We also illustrate the strategies, metaphors, and reactions that the designers deployed in the design process. Our findings uncover that the “otherness” of robotic touch broadens the design possibilities of emotional communication beyond mimicking interpersonal touch.
Directed by Joel Swanson
Exploring the Intersection of Art, Language, and Technology
By: Joel Swanson
Associated researchers:
Lab: TYPO Lab
Location: Floor 3, Rm. 300
The TYPO Lab is a speculative design lab that produces critically-oriented creative work. It is grounded in the idea that using technology in unexpected and unorthodox ways can lead to unique and novel insights regarding the role of technology within our world. For the ATLAS Research Open House, the TYPO Lab will be showcasing the work of students and faculty affiliated with the lab that explore this intersection of art, language, and technology.
Directed by Laura Devendorf
Generative Weaving with AdaCAD
By: Deanna Gelosi
Associated researchers: Laura Devendorf
Lab: Unstable Design Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 207
Generative art applies algorithmic constraints to a design space, such as music, literature, or computer visuals. AdaCAD, a parametric software tool that facilitates the integration of circuitry into weaving, is used to generate weaving plans (or drafts) from thousands of possible base structures—the possible designs are truly endless. In this exploration, we design weaving drafts algorithmically and then "validate" our code by physicalizing the designs on the loom. This digital-to-physical inquiry questions the relationship between the human and the machine, both computer and loom, and opens up possible future applications of optimizing for material density as well as design through self-expression.
NSF CAREER
BioFibers
By: Eldy Lazaro Vasquez
Associated researchers: Michael Rivera, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf
Lab: Unstable Design Lab & Living Matter Lab
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 207
Results of a series of explorations for converting gelatin by-product liquid solutions into spinnable textile fibers. This exploration used wet spinning as a process to make gelatin-based fibers.
Directed by Ricarose Roque
Facilitating Computational Tinkering
By: Celeste Moreno, Ronni Hayden, Ricarose Roque
Associated researchers:
Lab: Creative Communities
Location: Floor 2, Rm. 208
An interactive sampling of creative computing activities and tools that includes a mobile coding app and a drawing machine designed to engage youth and families to create and learn together with computing. A community-based project, the initiative is a research and design collaboration involving the Creative Communities research group at CU Boulder, the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab, the IdeaLAB maker spaces at Denver Public Library and the Clubhouse Network. Learn more at creativecommunities.group.