Hiroya Tanaka

4D computed tomography measurement for growing plant animation

Detailed observation of plant growth is essential for botanical analysis and realistic animation design. This study introduces spatial-temporal measurement techniques for a growing plant using X-ray Computed Tomography (CT). We scanned a target plant using CT over the course of couple of days with fixed time intervals to obtain four-dimensional (4D) volumetric images. We present a technique to segment the obtained 4D-CT images semi-automatically. We provide a 4D-CT measurement of budding bean sprouts to illustrate the feasibility of it.

Morphological computation on two dimensional self-assembly system

Self-assembly is a process in which components autonomously organized into structure without external direction. There are many researches of self-assembly system at molecular scale to macro scale. Such a self-assembly system may serve as the new production method with the characteristics, such as decomposability, self-repairing, self-replicating and adaptability. For developing such a new production method, an understanding of the interaction of shape and pattern, which can be called as morphological computation, is important.

Manual NC plotter

Even in todays world where we can touch information very intuitively with a gadget such as an iPhone, it is still interesting to know, actually, how bits are translated to physical matters and vice versa. Printers, for instance, print digital images on actual paper by moving its motors according to electrical signals. As to digital fabrication technologies, only 3D printers and laser cutters are often in limelight at the moment but this fields objective is how things can be digital, or how to translate bits into atoms and atoms into bits.