Digital Fabrication and Manipulation Method for Underwater
Display and Entertainment
Amy Koike

Satoshi Hashizume

Kazuki Takazawa

University of Tsukuba
amy23kik@gmail.com

University of Tsukuba
pota1401@hotmail.co.jp

University of Tsukuba
1220kazu1412@gmail.com

Mose Sakashita

Daitetsu Sato

Keisuke Kawahara

University of Tsukuba
sakasita86@gmail.com

University of Tsukuba
sato.daitetsu.sm@alumni.tsukuba.
ac.jp

University of Tsukuba
kawahara@ai.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp

Yoichi Ochiai
University of Tsukuba
wizard@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba(a)(b)(c)Figure 1: (a) Cartesian Divers designed using our method. (b) A mermaid is floating in the middle of water tank by PID control.
(c) A girl is looking at the message.

CCS CONCEPTS•Computing methodologies →Shape modeling;

KEYWORDS
Digital Fabrication, underwater entertainment, 3D print
ACM Reference format:
Amy Koike, Satoshi Hashizume, Kazuki Takazawa, Mose Sakashita,
Daitetsu Sato, Keisuke Kawahara, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2017. Digital
Fabrication and Manipulation Method for Underwater Display andEntertainment. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH ’17 Posters, Los
Angeles, CA, USA, July 30 - August 03, 2017, 2 pages.
DOI: 10.1145/3102163.3102226

1INTRODUCTION

Underwater expression is attractive. It seems like underwater objects are floating like anti-gravity scape by buoyancy,
and it is also impressive that bubbles rise while refracting
SIGGRAPH ’17 Posters, Los Angeles, CA, USA© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). This is the author’sversion of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Notfor redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published inProceedings of SIGGRAPH ’17 Posters, July 30 - August 03, 2017 ,http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3102163.3102226.

the light. In this work, we aim to combine digital fabrication with interactive technology and expand underwater
expression. To achieve this, we focused on a classic science
experiment called the Cartesian Diver. Because of growinginterest in the materialization of computer graphics, digital
fabrication technologies have recently emerged as one of themost important application fields in real-world-oriented computer graphics. In particular, research on digital fabricationthat gives dynamics properties is common. Spin-it [Bächeret al. 2014] presents design method for spinning objects byoptimizing rotational dynamics properties. Some studies use
non-contact manipulation. For example, ZeroN [Lee et al.
2011] controls the magnetic field to manipulate the object
and uses it as a floating screen and input user interface(UI).
Our work connects digital fabrication and non-contact manipulation that uses the space transmission power (waterpressure) around the object (the diver). [Koike et al. 2016]
proposes a design and manipulation method for the diver. In
this work, we updated the method and investigate stabilityof PID control. Furthermore, we propose some applications.

2IMPLEMENTATION

Our implementation has two phases; fabrication and manipulation.

SIGGRAPH ’17 Posters, July 30 - August 03, 2017, Los Angeles, CA, USA
(a)

(b)

A. Koike et. al.

(c)

(d)

(e)

Figure 2: Various applications of this work.
target line
Cartesian Diver A
Cartesian Diver B(mm)

In the fabrication phase, we created an algorithm to calculate the appropriate amount and position of the cavity inside
3D model. As the conditions for the 3D model to function
as the diver,350300
250200• it has to float when you first put it into a water tank.
• it is necessary to have a hole which water enters theobject when water pressure is applied to the watertank.
• rotation moments should not be occurred so that theobject floats up and down with the correct orientation.
In the manipulation phase, we developed an equipment
to manipulate the diver. It has a glass tank connected withmotor-worked syringe pomp. (Figure 1(b)) We can applied
water pressure to water tank by moving the syringe pomp.
And it also has a camera connected PC to feedback theposition of the diver in water tank for PID control.

3RESULTWe designed various shaped 3D models showed in Figure 1(a).
Behavior of two divers under the PID control is showed inFigure 3. Although it seems that there is some shake due tocamera tracking delay, the diver keeps floating in the middleof water (target line) tank without hitting the upper part or
the lower part of the tank.

4 APPLICATION
4.1 Various shaped 3D models
We designed a mermaid (Figure 2(a)) and a dragon (Figure2(b)). The body of the dragon consists of some parts, so itshows funny movements when water pressure is applied.

4.2

MessagingWe designed the diver that has information presentation
function. We fabricated the diver in the form of alphabet

15010050t (s)00510203040506070

Figure 3: This graph shows behavior of two Cartesian Divers
while PID control that manipulates them to stabilize at thetarget line. Red line is a target position, and A (Orange line)
is smaller and lighter than B (Blue). B is moving steadily
than A.
(Figure 1(c) and Figure 2(c)) and the form of a speech balloon(Figure 2(d)).

4.3

Moving screen

We propose a diver which works as a screen in the water tank.
Figure 2(e) expresses scanning the body tissue.

REFERENCES
Moritz Bächer, Emily Whiting, Bernd Bickel, and Olga SorkineHornung. 2014. Spin-it: Optimizing Moment of Inertia for Spinnable
Objects. ACM Trans. Graph. 33, 4, Article 96 (July 2014), 10 pages.
DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2601097.2601157
Amy Koike, Satoshi Hashizume, Mose Sakashita, Yuki Kimura,
Daitetsu Sato, Keita Kanai, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2016. Syringeworked Mermaid: Computational Fabrication and Stabilization
Method for Cartesian Diver. In SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Posters(SA ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 2 pages. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3005274.3005316
Jinha Lee, Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2011. ZeroN: Mid-air Tangible Interaction Enabled by Computer Controlled Magnetic Levitation. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on
User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’11). ACM, New
York, NY, USA, 327–336. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2047196.
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