The Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering (DIME) at the University of Malta has hosted the first international workshop on Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM): Future Interactive Devices (DEFINED), between the 17 and 18 March 2022.
The goal of the workshop was to explore the mindset of adopting an interactive product design approach in Additive Manufacturing (AM) together with the exploration of integrating sensing, display, and illumination elements to be directly embedded in the architecture or mechanical structure of these interactive products. Using these elements, unique product architecture, novel user-interaction techniques, bespoke and modular industrial designs, and embedded optoelectronic components can be digitally fabricated for rapid, high fidelity, highly customised interactive devices.
The workshop consisted of a number of round-table discussions covering topics such as principles to successfully design, fabricate and test future interactive devices, how to capture user data for bespoke AM products, how to embed sensors and electronics in 3D printed products, what is the impact of AM process maturity level on such artefacts, how to apply computational design approaches for AM and the feasibility of the AM process for mass customisation. Keynote speakers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, School of Design and Creative Arts at Loughborough University and the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado participated in this two-day event.
This workshop, which has been chaired by Prof. Ing. Philip Farrugia, from DIME, has been organised as part of the PRIME-VR2 project aimed at developing innovative 3D-printed Virtual Reality (VR)-based bespoke controllers and the supporting IT platform for rehabilitation purposes.
Running as part of the EU-funded H2020 PRIME-VR2 project, this three-year project aims to develop a state-of-art digital environment for VR rehabilitation at home and in clinic, through a virtual gaming space that will provide effective therapy and friendly competition. It has built a multi-disciplinary consortium of 14 institutions in Italy, United Kingdom, Malta, Finland, Hungary, Netherlands, Ireland, Greece, and Cyprus. The project partners are developing the VRHAB-IT platform with a focus on supporting the development of functional motor skills in the upper body; with arm, hand and finger movements via a VR environment which is customised with adaptive controllers which will be co-created with users according to their ability and condition.
The DEFINED workshop event was supported by MakerFaire Malta, the Design Society, the Institution of Engineering Designers (UK) and the Design for Additive Manufacturing Network (UK).
Further details are available online.