Paper Mechatronics

Collaborators: Hyunjoo Oh, Mike Eisenberg, Sherry Hsi

Paper Mechatronics is a novel interdisciplinary design medium for children, enabled by recent advances in craft technologies: the term refers to a reappraisal of traditional educational papercrafts in combination with accessible mechanical, electronic, and computational elements. We present a design case study–building computationally-enhanced paper flowers–and discuss the iterative design process involved in the creation. We also describe a workshop we conducted with teenagers to evaluate paper mechatronics as a creative learning activity for children. We conclude with a discussion of future directions.

2015 Paper mechatronics: a design case study for a young medium. Hyunjoo Oh, Michael Eisenberg, Mark D. Gross, and Sherry Hsi. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 371-374. DOI=10.1145/2771839.2771919