Title:
CIRCULAR INTERACTIVE MATERIAL:Making Ubiquitous Computing More Scalable and Sustainable
CIRCULAR INTERACTIVE MATERIAL:Making Ubiquitous Computing More Scalable and Sustainable
Author(s)
Cheng, Tingyu
Advisor(s)
Abowd, Gregory D.
Oh, HyunJoo
Oh, HyunJoo
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Abstract
Weiser has predicted the third generation of computing would result in individuals interacting with many computing devices and ultimately can “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”. However, how to achieve this seamlessness and what associated interaction should be developed are still under investigation. On the other hand, for achieving a fully immersive intelligent environment, we might produce trillions of smart devices, but their current configuration (e.g., plastic housing, PCB-board) will inevitably increase environment burden. In my research, I work on creating computational materials with different encoded material properties such as conductivity, transparency or water-solubility that can be seamlessly integrated into our living environment to enrich different modalities of information communication. Meanwhile, this material intelligence will also affect devices' usefulness and life expectancy from a sustainability perspective. This thesis contains five works to scope the future pervasiveness of IoT devices, and meanwhile paying attention to their entire device life cycle. They emphasize different aspects that are crucial to construct the circular interactive material embedded environment by balancing the tension between scalability and sustainability. Silver Tape is a simple fabrication technique leveraging the inkjet printing circuits to transfer silver traces onto everyday surfaces without any post-treatment. This method allows users to quickly fabricate versatile sensors by leveraging the intrinsic material property and meanwhile the transferred sensors can be repaired when damaged. Duco is the second project that negates the need for any human intervention by leveraging a hanging robotic system that automatically sketches large-scale circuity. We have explored not only how to incorporate these computational abilities into our living structures such as walls, but also created erasable ink that allows users to erase the circuitry and embed the surface with new capabilities to make the walls reusable. PITAS is a thin-sheet robotic material composed of a reversible phase transition actuating layer and a heating/sensing layer to create shape-changing devices that can locally or remotely convey physical information such as shape, color, texture and temperature changes. This project achieved a distinctive renewal process by immersing the material-actuator in ethanol, allowing the devices with new life. Then, the next project Functional Destruction aims to further promote sustainability by designing devices that self-destruct once they have fulfilled their purpose. The last project, called Recy-ctronics, is to extend the idea from Functional Destruction by developing fully recyclable circuits, by not only treating the physical disintegration as the end of a device's life but the beginning point of a device's new lifespan. This work also extends beyond traditional thin-sheet electronics, introducing three distinct form factors: sheets, foam, and tubes.
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Date Issued
2024-07-08
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Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Dissertation