Tecniche innovative di modellazione diretta nell'early stage design

Partendo da un’analisi dei problemi che si incontrano nella fase di conceptual design, si presentano le diverse tecniche di modellazione tridimensionale, con particolare attenzione al metodo subdivision e agli algoritmi che lo governano (Chaikin, Doo – Sabin). Vengono poi proposti alcuni esempi applicativi della modellazione free form e skeleton, con una successiva comparazione, sugli stessi modelli, delle sequenze e operazioni necessarie con le tradizionali tecniche di modellazione parametrica. Si riporta un esempio dell’utilizzo del software IronCAD, il primo software a unire la modellazione parametrica e diretta. Si descrivono le limitazioni della modellazione parametrica e di quella history free nella fase concettuale di un progetto, per arrivare a definire le caratteristiche della hybrid modeling, nuovo approccio alla modellazione. Si presenta brevemente il prototipo, in fase di sviluppo, che tenta di applicare concretamente i concetti dell’hybrid modeling e che vuole essere la base di partenza per una nuova generazione di softwares CAD. Infine si presenta la possibilità di ottenere simulazioni real time su modelli che subiscono modifiche topologiche. La simulazione real time è permessa dalla ridefinizione in forma parametrica del problema lineare elastico che viene successivamente risolto mediante l’applicazione congiunta delle R – Functions e del metodo PGD. Seguono esempi di simulazione real time.

Fighting child marriage in developing countries: design and development of a mobile application

Child marriage is still a great issue in developing countries and even if the interventions to prevent it are having results, they are not enough to eliminate the problem. Among the strategies that seem to work most to fight child marriage, there is the empowerment of girls with information combined with education of parents and community. As smartphones are more accessible year after year in developing countries, this thesis wants to investigate if a mobile app could be effective in fighting child marriage and which characteristics such an app should have. The research was organized in four phases and used design and creation and case study methodologies. Firstly, the literature was analyzed and an initial design was proposed. Secondly, expert interviews were performed to gain feedback on the proposed design, and afterwards prototype was built. Thirdly, a case study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was performed to test the prototype, gaining insights and improvements through group interviews with 26 girls aged 15-19. Finally, a first version of the app was developed and a second phase of the case study was run in the DRC to understand if the girls were able to use the app. This phase included 14 girls of which 6 had participated in the prototype testing and used questionnaires as a data generation method. The app was built following the Principles for Digital Development. Even if this app is built based on the case study in DRC is modular and easily adaptable to other contexts as it is not content-specific. It was shown that is worth continuing to study this topic and it was defined a conceptual framework for designing learning apps for developing countries, in particular, to fight child, early, and forced marriage.

Enhanced switchgear connection testing through augmented reality: early developments

Augmented reality is an emerging field of interactive design in which virtual material is seamlessly blended with displays of real world environments. The tremendous potential of augmented reality has begun to be explored with the emergence of personal mobile devices capable of constructing engaging augmented reality experiences. This work is part of a project aiming at using augmented reality goggles to bring advance information to the user interacting with switch-gear during automation cabling. In particular we will be focusing on the recognition and definition of the figures of the component on the AR device. In this part we are using standard camera that allows us to get real images and helps us to localize the gearbox in space through ARUCO marker and we can exploit in order to re-project the actual shape of the component that are currently interested in manipulation by exploiting the data provided by the database. The experiments are carried out using the camera to get the images of the real world switch-gear and re-project those images with the component superimposed on it. Using transforms of the database we did localization to re-project the rendered image of component exactly on the real world component, which can be further integrated in AR goggles to see the component superimposed in real-time.