Fologram Publications

A collection of papers describing implementations and use cases of Fologram.

Making in Mixed Reality

Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham, Nick van den Berg, Matthew Beanland

The construction industry's reliance on two-dimensional documentation results in inefficiency, inconsistency, waste, human error, increased cost and the impracticality of architectural experimentation with novel form, structure, material or fabrication approaches. We describe a software platform that enables designers to create interactive holographic instructions that translate design models into intelligent processes rather than static drawings. A prototypical project to design and construct a pavilion from bent mild steel tube illustrates the use of this software to develop applications assisting with the design, fabrication, assembly and analysis of the structure. We further demonstrate that fabrication within mixed reality environments can enable unskilled construction teams to assemble complex structures in short time frames and with minimal errors, and outline possibilities for further improvements.

Self-Organizing Maps for Intuitive Gesture-Based Geometric Modelling in Augmented Reality

Benjamin Felbrich, Achim Menges, Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham

Modelling three-dimensional virtual objects in the context of architectural, product and game design requires elaborate skill in handling the respective CAD software and is often tedious. We explore the potentials of Kohonen networks, also called self-organizing maps (SOM) as a concept for intuitive 3D modelling aided through mixed reality. We effectively provide a computational "clay" that can be pulled, pushed and shaped by picking and placing control objects with an augmented reality headset. Our approach benefits from combining state of the art CAD software with GPU computation and mixed reality hardware as well as the introduction of custom SOM network topologies and arbitrary data dimensionality. The approach is demonstrated in three case studies.

StructVR Virtual Reality Structures

Gregory Quinn, Adrian Geleazzi, Fabian Schneider, Christoph Gengnagel

This paper presents Virtual Reality Structures (StructVR), an immersive virtual environment designed to engage, educate and entertain users via virtual physical interaction with digital structural systems which display immediate visual feedback on structural deformations, internal forces and reactions. Interaction with pre-set demos as well as a creative sandbox mode provide an environment which can help users significantly to develop their understanding of and intuition for structural behaviour and theory. The implications of this prototype which combines the geometric strengths of Rhino / Grasshopper, the simulation speed and precision of dynamic relaxation solver Kangaroo as well as the rendering and design capabilities of Unity are far reaching. This paper presents a proof-of-concept prototype and discusses its technical realisation.