The intersection between social, technical, and economic factors biases new product development to focus on utilitarian value. However, objects that serve alternative goals, behaviors and emotions have accompanied humankind for millennia. This article speculates about robotic objects for one non-utilitarian behavior and its implications: destruction. Robots and objects for destruction have a shared history of embodiment and heavily rely on their embodiment for interaction. Yet the topic of destruction is not very common in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI). Thus, we (1) present a survey of ethnographic investigations that show modes of HRI related to destruction, and (2) develop speculative concepts of interaction that demonstrate these ideas in HRI. By exemplifying a broad range of speculative uses of destruction in HRI and grounding it in literature, we hope this theoretical and conceptual article will bring a fresh perspective on alternative interactions with robots.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations lists the main challenges in feeding 10 billion people in 2050. Many aspects of our food systems need to be improved, as today we waste around one-third of the food we produce. One way to minimize food waste is to rely on dry substances in the form of powders, which have a longer shelf life than fresh products and are easier to store.

Industrial design focuses on minimizing fabrication variability, aiming for identical products, while craft practice often results in unpredictable outcomes. We rely on crackle, an explicit pottery phenomenon that renders a pattern of cracks in ceramic glazing, to produce craft-unique outcomes in a moderately controlled design process. With the help of a dedicated CAD tool and a laser machine, we embed artificial decorations in a crackle pattern. By pre-processing the clay and post-processing the glaze, we demonstrate a technique to partially control the typical size of cracks in a given area, thus embedding visual forms in the glaze.

Generative tools contribute new possibilities to traditional design, yet formal representation of digital procedures can be counterintuitive to some makers. We envision the use of catalogues in parametric design, replacing abstract design procedures with a given set of visual options to select from and react to. We review the research challenges in realizing our catalog vision. We contribute an embryonic catalog generated from a formal list of parameters, demonstrated on a parametric mushroom. We also present a simple user study where students engaged in a design task relying on a catalog of prototypes generated by parametric design.

The craft of carpentry relies on joinery: the connections between pieces of wood to create multipart structures. In traditional woodworking, joints are limited to the manual chisel skills of the craftsperson, or to capabilities of the machines, which favorite 90° or 180° angle joints with no more than two elements. We contribute an interactive design process in which joints are generated digitally to allow for unrestricted beam connectors, then produced from Nylon-12 using selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing. We present our Generative Joinery Design Tool and demonstrate our system on a selection of stools. The paper exemplifies the potential of Digital Joinery to enhance carpentry by incorporating a hybrid and interactive level of design sophistication and affordances that are very hard to achieve with traditional skills and tools.

Digital Gastronomy (DG) is a culinary concept that enhances traditional cooking with new HCI capabilities, rather than replacing the chef with an autonomous machine. Preliminary projects demonstrate implementation of DG via the deployment of digital instruments in a kitchen. Here we contribute an alternative solution, demonstrating the use of a modular (silicone) mold and a genetic mold-arrangement algorithm to achieve a variety of shape permutations for a recipe, allowing the control of taste structures in the dish. The mold overcomes the slow production time of 3D food printing, while allowing for a high degree of flexibility in the numerous shapes produced. This flexibility enables us to satisfy chefs' and diners' diverse requirements. We present the mold's logic, arithmetic, design and special parts, the evolutionary algorithm, and a recipe, exploiting a new digital cooking concept of programmable edible taste structures and taste patterns to enrich user interaction with a given recipe.

The digital design space, unlimited by its virtual freedom, differs from traditional craft, which is bounded by a fixed set of given materials. We study how to introduce parametric design tools to craftspersons. Our hypothesis is that the arrangement of parametric design in modular representation, in the form of a catalog, can assist makers unfamiliar with this practice. We evaluate this assumption in the realm of bag design, through a Honeycomb Smocking Pattern Catalog and custom Computer-Aided Smocking (CAS) design software. We describe the technical work and designs made with our tools, present a user study that validates our assumptions, and conclude with ideas for future work developing additional tools to bridge computational design and craft.

Many interactive devices use both machine elements and sensors, simultaneously but redundantly enabling and measuring the same physical function. We present Steel-Sense, an approach to joining these two families of elements to create a new type of HCI design primitive. We leverage recent developments in 3D printing to embed sensing in metal structures that are otherwise difficult to equip with sensors, and present four design principles, implementing (1) an electronic switch integrated within a ball bearing; (2) a voltage divider within a gear; (3) a variable capacitor embedded in a hinge; and (4) a pressure sensor within a screw. Each design demonstrates a different sensing principle, and signals its performance through (1) movement; (2) position; (3) angle (4) or stress. We mirror our elements physical performance in a virtual environment, evaluate our designs electronically and structurally, and discuss future work and implications for HCI research.

Several recent projects have introduced digital machines to the kitchen, yet their impact on culinary culture is limited. We envision a culture of Digital Gastronomy that enhances traditional cooking with new interactive capabilities, rather than replacing the chef with an autonomous machine. Thus, we deploy existing digital fabrication instruments in traditional kitchen and integrate them into cooking via hybrid recipes. This concept merges manual and digital procedures, and imports parametric design tools into cooking, allowing the chef to personalize the tastes, flavors, structures and aesthetics of dishes. In this paper we present our hybrid kitchen and the new cooking methodology, illustrated by detailed recipes with degrees of freedom that can be set digitally prior to cooking. Lastly, we discuss future work and conclude with thoughts on the future of hybrid gastronomy.

People have been making things for a long time, yet digital making has developed mostly within an industrial context. We question how non-digital craft cultures can inform the design of digital tools. Furthermore, what methods can help us understand these cultures in ways that are relevant to digital practice? As makers ourselves, we see potential for collaborative making to mitigate barriers in communication and provide insight into non-digital practices and values. To evaluate this approach, we visited a hunter-gatherer community that preserves an ancient craft, bringing with us digital design and fabrication tools. Working together, we merged digital tools with ostrich eggshell jewelry craft. We use this experience to draw conclusions about making as a form of communication, the importance of supporting appropriation and immediacy in collaborations, the challenge of combining abstract design tools with concrete approaches, and the value of incorporating design and making into communal life.

We introduce D-Coil, a new digital 3D modeling approach using wax coiling to bring tangibility to the design of digital models. After defining a shape to extrude, the users follow the lead of a hand-held actuated extruder to instantiate the actual extrusion using wax. The tangibility of the wax extrusion sets the stage to create the next components until the digital model is completed. The digital model affords all digital attributes (ease of transformation, distribution, and 3D printing) while the wax artifact can be discarded or kept as a one-of-a-kind memento. We present a proof-of-concept implementation of D-Coil and showcase how this additive approach can also be extended to a subtractive process using a digitally actuated cutter. By adding a 6DOF mouse, users can also include scaling, rotation, and bending effects to create a wide variety of shapes often difficult for novices to produce in standard CAD software.

We present an augmented airbrush that allows novices to experience the art of spray painting. Inspired by the thriving field of smart tools, our handheld device uses 6DOF tracking, augmentation of the airbrush trigger, and a specialized algorithm to restrict the application of paint to a preselected reference image. Our device acts both as a physical spraying device and as an intelligent assistive tool, providing simultaneous manual and computerized control. Unlike prior art, here the virtual simulation guides the physical rendering ( inverse rendering ), allowing for a new spray painting experience with singular physical results. We present our novel hardware design, control software, and a user study that verifies our research objectives.

We present an approach to combining digital fabrication and craft, demonstrating a hybrid interaction paradigm where human and machine work in synergy. The FreeD is a hand-held digital milling device, monitored by a computer while preserving the makers freedom to manipulate the work in many creative ways. Relying on a pre-designed 3D model, the computer gets into action only when the milling bit risks the objects integrity, preventing damage by slowing down the spindle speed, while the rest of the time it allows complete gestural freedom. We present the technology and explore several interaction methodologies for carving. In addition, we present a user study that reveals how synergetic cooperation between human and machine preserves the expressiveness of manual practice. This quality of the hybrid territory evolves into design personalization. We conclude on the creative potential of open-ended procedures within this hybrid interactive territory of manual smart tools and devices.

In this paper, we present an approach to combining digital fabrication and craft, emphasizing the user experience. While many researchers strive to enable makers to design and produce 3D objects, our research seeks to present a new fabrication approach to make unique, one-of-a-kind artifacts. To that end, we developed the FreeD, a hand-held digital milling device. The system is guided and monitored by a computer while preserving the maker's freedom to sculpt and carve, and to manipulate the work in many creative ways. Relying on a predesigned 3D model, the computer gets into action only when the milling bit risks the object's integrity, by slowing down the spindle's speed or by drawing back the shaft, while the rest of the time it allows complete gestural freedom. We describe the key concepts of our work and its motivation, present the FreeD's architecture and technology, and discuss two projects made with the tool.

In this paper we explore human-computer interaction for carving, building upon our previous work with the FreeD digital sculpting device. We contribute a new tool design (FreeD V2), with a novel set of interaction techniques for the fabrication of static models: personalized tool paths, manual overriding, and physical merging of virtual models. We also present techniques for fabricating dynamic models, which may be altered directly or parametrically during fabrication. We demonstrate a semi-autonomous operation and evaluate the performance of the tool. We end by discussing synergistic cooperation between human and machine to ensure accuracy while preserving the expressiveness of manual practice.