robert kovacs, phd

Lead Engineer Mechatronics | Robotics | HCI | Fabrication

(ex Hasso Plattner Institute, Microsoft Research, Interactive-Scape)

contact

robertkovax.info [at] gmail.com
scholar | acm dl | linkedin | orcid | github

publication at UIST’23


AirTied: Automatic Personal Fabrication of Truss Structures

ACM UIST’23
Lukas Rambold, Robert Kovacs, Conrad Lempert, Muhammad Abdullah, Helena Lendowski, Lukas Fritzsche, Martin Taraz, and Patrick Baudisch
AirTied is a device that fabricates truss structures in a fully automatic fashion. AirTied achieves this by unrolling a 20cm-wide inflatable plastic tube and tying nodes into it. AirTied creates nodes by holding onto a segment of tube, stacking additional tube segments on top of it, tying them up, and releasing the result. The resulting structures are material-efficient and light as well as sturdy, as we demonstrate by creating a 6m-tower. Unlike the prior art, AirTied requires no scaffolding and no building blocks, bringing automated truss construction into the reach of personal fabrication.


industrial-research


LEROSH: training robots for crafts

(at interactive-scape & werk5)  The Lerosh project is about exploring how machine learning can help artisans to work with collaborative robots on unique artifacts. In particular, training robots with the "master's movements" that can be later generalized to any object, geometry, or material. The key challenge here is to extract the high-level skills from the craftsman's demonstration and to replicate the fine-motoric movements using multi-sensory feedback loops. project page: LEROSH.de


phd thesis: human-scale personal fabrication (4 papers)

advised by prof. Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute - Human Computer Interaction lab.
PDF (DOI:https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-55539)




metamaterial mechanisms




laser-cutting and fast fabrication 






internship @ Microsoft Research




haptic interfaces for blind users





haptic feedback in virtual reality




cyber security




art projects



2023 robert kovacs