Computational Design and Fabrication of Protective Foam

2025-03-12

AI Summary

To address the need for personalized 3D object protective packaging, this paper proposes an interactive framework for designing and fabricating modular foam structures. Given a target object’s 3D model, our method automatically generates a block distribution map via deep texture mapping, partitions the surface into inner and outer protection zones using region segmentation, and constructs a height-field foam structure with controllable resolution and multi-material compatibility. The framework supports direct physical fabrication across diverse media—including LEGO bricks, sponge, and wood. Our key contribution is the first height-field foam generation paradigm enabling simultaneous resolution tunability and geometry–material co-optimization, establishing a complete digital-to-physical pipeline for multi-material fabrication. User studies confirm high usability and design accuracy; physical prototypes demonstrate excellent and robust impact protection performance.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Computer Vision: 3D Computer Vision
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to design protective foam for packaging 3D objects. Users first load a 3D object and define a block-based design space by setting the block resolution and the size of each block. The system then constructs a block map in the space using depth textures of the input object, separates the map into two regions, and outputs the regions as foams. The proposed method is fast and stable, allowing the user to interactively make protective foams. The generated foam is a height field in each direction, so the foams can easily be fabricated using various materials, such as LEGO blocks, sponge with slits, glass, and wood. This paper shows some examples of fabrication results to demonstrate the robustness of our system. In addition, we conducted a user study and confirmed that our system is effective for manually designing protective foams envisioned by users.

Problem

• Design protective foam for 3D object packaging
• Interactive and fast foam generation method
• Fabrication of foam using various materials

Innovation

• Block-based design space for foam creation
• Depth textures used for block map construction
• Height field foams fabricated with various materials