The sensory materials library - AiLoupe Pecha Kucha presentation

Intelligent Design Systems for Innovation is developing AiLoupe, a mobile-app which utilises image recognition to identify, characterise and catalogue materials. It features the Royal College of Art’s Sensory Materials Library, a growing database which includes physical and sensory properties to help designers with materials selection in the product design process

Textile Robotic Interaction for Designer-Robot Collaboration

This late-breaking report describes lab-based robot experiments involving two robot arms scanning and interaction with a set of 12 novel sustainable materials programmed with handfeel gestures inspired by how designers evaluate textile materials. The aim of gathering this data is to spur research in robot perception of soft materials and to contribute towards human-robot collaborative design systems. The complete dataset including scanned images, video of interactions accompanied by the code to produce robot motion paths are made publically available

Workshop on human-centred AI design methods to understand “Textiles Hand”

This collaborative workshop aims to co-generate tactile-based sensorial data for AI design tools. The project teams experienced in AI design methodologies and sensory materials assessment will deliver a material centric design workshop to understand embodied and tacit knowledge of the textiles world. With the contribution of participants, the new design methods to integrate the generated data will be discussed to build on the current state-of-the-art design tools

Human-centred AI design methods to understand intelligent systems design empowered by multisensory experience with textiles

Conceiving intelligent systems with human-robot interaction is difficult without first-hand knowledge of design tasks. This poster presents ideation results from a workshopon new forms of human-robotic collaboration primed with human experience of multisensory experiences with textiles. Twenty-five Intelligent System Design students were presented with traditional and contemporary design methods regarding the human experience of textiles, along with the latest research in AI and robotic evaluation of multisensory textile properties. Putting theory into practise, participants then engaged in individual tactile subjective assessments of a selection of fabrics with paper-based bipolar scales followed by group reflection on the process. This led into the brainstorming portion of the workshop with the prompt — How can AI collaboration in material assessments advance the applications intertwining with material tangibility? In order to have a range of ideations - participants voted on application domains and self-organised into groups with specific application focuses. The domains were (in order of popularity) – (1) Well-being and Care, (2) Gaming / Metaverse, (3) Craft, (4) Mobility Design and (5) Product Design. This poster presents a collection of ideas centred around these domains produced by the groups. The practical implications of this workshop was to demonstrate how a human-centred design process focused on multisensory experiences presented in theory and then through tactile practise can contribute towards ideation within intelligent systems design

AiLoupe at Fashion X AI

From February 2023, Fashion X AI: 2022-2023 International Salon programme will showcase diverse AI empowered design solutions via a touring exhibition with venues in Hong Kong and London. The interactive exhibition will include the diverse works of international and local creative innovation practitioners AiLoupe allows designers and material developers to discover and assess textile materials for material identification, knowledge and selection. Identifying materials takes you to each Material Data Card, showing sensory subjective data, translating the tactile, physical elements of touching the materials digitally. AiLoupe uses the Sensory Materials Library which is an AI research project for materials selection in the product design process by improving conventional materials libraries with sensory and human experience properties of materials. We have demonstrated how AiLoupe can present sustainable alternatives as ‘like for likes’ to traditional less sustainable materials that Designers are more familiar with

AiLoupe at Intertextile 2023

AiLoupe allows designers and material developers to discover and assess textile materials for material identification, knowledge and selection. Identifying materials takes you to each Material Data Card, showing sensory subjective data, translating the tactile, physical elements of touching the materials digitally. AiLoupe uses the Sensory Materials Library which is an AI research project for materials selection in the product design process by improving conventional materials libraries with sensory and human experience properties of materials. We have demonstrated how AiLoupe can present sustainable alternatives as ‘like for likes’ to traditional less sustainable materials that Designers are more familiar with

AiLoupe at the Future Fabric Expo 2023

Pioneers since 2011, the annual Future Fabrics Expo aims to showcase the material solutions that place the preservation and regeneration of nature, climate and biodiversity at centre stage. AiLoupe allows designers and material developers to discover and assess textile materials for material identification, knowledge and selection. Identifying materials takes you to each Material Data Card, showing sensory subjective data, translating the tactile, physical elements of touching the materials digitally. AiLoupe uses the Sensory Materials Library which is an AI research project for materials selection in the product design process by improving conventional materials libraries with sensory and human experience properties of materials. We have demonstrated how AiLoupe can present sustainable alternatives as ‘like for likes’ to traditional less sustainable materials that Designers are more familiar with

Textile robotic interaction dataset for designer robot collaboration (HRI 2024)

This repository stores the scripts and text-based data for a collaborative experiment conducted in July 2023 between two research projects, Intelligent Design Systems for Innovation (RP2-5) at the Royal College of Art, London, UK and Human-centred AI Design (RP2-4) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic. Both projects are funded by the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Design under the InnoHK Research Clusters, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. There were two robotic experiments. Both had the general aim of scanning and recording image-based / video data of textile materials. The set of 12 novel sustainable textile materials used in these experiments was provided by the RP2-5, sourced from via Sustainable Angle from their Future Fabric Material Library. RP2-4 provided access to UFactory xArm7 robot arms at the human-robotic collaboration lab

Workshopping the textile hand: Reimagining subjective assessment of textile materials with digital technologies

Designers continuously move between analog and digital spaces in order to assess sensory qualities of materials to build comprehensive references when sourcing and selecting them. Material decision making in contemporary design practice is increasingly collaborative. However, traditionally, subjective assessment of textiles has been studied at the individual level, focusing less on group workshops. This paper analyses two workshops where participants assessed sensory properties of textile materials, one individually, and one in groups, to show: 1. the difference of subjective material collection between individuals or groups. 2. improvements to the subjective assessment process, comparing physical and digital tools. 3. validation of the subjective differences among various material properties, contributing valuable insights for the assessment process in digital environments. This paper contributes references for the implementation of subjective assessments using digital platforms, ultimately improving the user experience for future designer-researcher digital tools