Project assistant professor Koya Narumi and his team received the 7th Hagura Award of Excellence

On 10th November 2023, Project assistant professor Koya Narumi, Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, and his team received the 7th Hagura Award of Excellence.

The 7th Hagura Award of Excellence

The Hagura Award was established in 2017 by the State of the Art Technologies Expression Association to help improve the quality of expression technologies and their dissemination in a wide range of fields in honor of Hiroyuki Hagura, who made significant contributions to the research and dissemination of cutting-edge expression technologies such as 3D stereoscopic images, holography, and VR. This year was the seventh year for the award, and two entries were selected for the Excellence Award.

About awarded research

Koya Narumi*, Kazuki Koyama*, Kai Suto, Yuta Noma, Hiroki Sato, Tomohiro Tachi, Masaaki Sugimoto, Takeo Igarashi, and Yoshihiro Kawahara. 2023. Inkjet 4D Print: Self-folding Tessellated Origami Objects by Inkjet UV Printing. ACM Trans. Graph. 42, 4, Article 117 (August 2023), 13 pages (* joint first authors). https://doi.org/10.1145/3592409

By printing origami patterns on the front and back sides of a thin heat-shrinkable sheet and heating the entire sheet, we have developed a technology that automatically folds complex origami with more than thousands of faces. The system automatically calculates the patterns required for self-folding and achieves 3D structures by 2D inkjet printing. Compared to conventional 3D printing, this method requires less time, materials, or space, thereby contributing to sustainable manufacturing.

Your impression & future plan

This research was made possible by the diverse cooperation of researchers, companies, and designers. As a result, our efforts have led to impactful results as the next generation of fabrication in which 3D shapes are created with 2D fabrication. In the future, we aim to extend this self-folding method to achieve function and design, as well as shape.