Computational Design and Fabrication of Protective Foam
Tsukasa Fukusato, Naoki Kita
TL;DR
The paper addresses interactive design of protective foams for packaging 3D objects by introducing a block-based design space driven by depth textures from opposing views. It builds a block map $BM = \overline{A \cap B}$ from depth textures and uses region growing to produce two height-field foams, enabling fabricability across multiple materials. The authors provide a real-time UI with block setting, generation, rotation initialization via maximizing $F(\psi,\theta,\phi)$, and visualization, and validate the approach with fabrication examples and a user study. Results show the method supports novices in quickly producing workable foams, suggesting significant practical impact for rapid prototyping in digital fabrication and protective packaging.
Abstract
This paper proposes a method to design protective foam for packaging 3D objects. Users first load a 3D object and define a block-based design space by setting the block resolution and the size of each block. The system then constructs a block map in the space using depth textures of the input object, separates the map into two regions, and outputs the regions as foams. The proposed method is fast and stable, allowing the user to interactively make protective foams. The generated foam is a height field in each direction, so the foams can easily be fabricated using various materials, such as LEGO blocks, sponge with slits, glass, and wood. This paper shows some examples of fabrication results to demonstrate the robustness of our system. In addition, we conducted a user study and confirmed that our system is effective for manually designing protective foams envisioned by users.