Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface
Seeking a more flexible and efficient production, additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a major player in the industrial field, streamlining the fabrication of custom tangible assets by directly 3D printing them. However, production still takes too long due to printing, but also due to the prod...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2020-07-01
|
| Series: | Sensors |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/15/4255 |
| _version_ | 1797560805861883904 |
|---|---|
| author | Ivan Rodriguez-Conde Celso Campos |
| author_facet | Ivan Rodriguez-Conde Celso Campos |
| author_sort | Ivan Rodriguez-Conde |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Seeking a more flexible and efficient production, additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a major player in the industrial field, streamlining the fabrication of custom tangible assets by directly 3D printing them. However, production still takes too long due to printing, but also due to the product design stage, in which the customer works together with an expert to create a 3D model of the targeted product by means of computer-aided design (CAD) software. Skipping intermediate agents and making customers responsible for the design process will reduce waiting times and speed up the manufacturing process. This work is conceived as a first step towards that optimized AM model, being aimed at bringing CAD tools closer to clients through an enhanced user experience, and consequently at simplifying pre-manufacturing design tasks. Specifically, as an alternative to the traditional user interface operated with the keyboard and mouse duo, standard in CAD and AM, the paper presents a comprehensive multi-touch interaction system conceived as a customer-centric human-machine interface. To depict the proposed solutions, we adopt furniture manufacturing as a case study and, supported by a CAD-like software prototype for 3D modeling of custom cabinets introduced in a previous work of the authors, we assess our approach’s validity in terms of usability by conducting in-lab and remote user studies. The comparison between the designed multi-touch interaction and its desktop alternative yields promising results, showing improved performance and higher satisfaction of the end-user for the touch-based approach, that lay the groundwork for a smarter factory vision based on remotely-operated AM. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T18:05:38Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-deb1e3afae8c4521905105adc65cb005 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1424-8220 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T18:05:38Z |
| publishDate | 2020-07-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sensors |
| spelling | doaj.art-deb1e3afae8c4521905105adc65cb0052023-11-20T08:32:00ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202020-07-012015425510.3390/s20154255Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User InterfaceIvan Rodriguez-Conde0Celso Campos1Department of Computer Science, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 South University Avenue, Little Rock, AK 72204, USADepartment of Computer Science, Campus As Lagoas, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, SpainSeeking a more flexible and efficient production, additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a major player in the industrial field, streamlining the fabrication of custom tangible assets by directly 3D printing them. However, production still takes too long due to printing, but also due to the product design stage, in which the customer works together with an expert to create a 3D model of the targeted product by means of computer-aided design (CAD) software. Skipping intermediate agents and making customers responsible for the design process will reduce waiting times and speed up the manufacturing process. This work is conceived as a first step towards that optimized AM model, being aimed at bringing CAD tools closer to clients through an enhanced user experience, and consequently at simplifying pre-manufacturing design tasks. Specifically, as an alternative to the traditional user interface operated with the keyboard and mouse duo, standard in CAD and AM, the paper presents a comprehensive multi-touch interaction system conceived as a customer-centric human-machine interface. To depict the proposed solutions, we adopt furniture manufacturing as a case study and, supported by a CAD-like software prototype for 3D modeling of custom cabinets introduced in a previous work of the authors, we assess our approach’s validity in terms of usability by conducting in-lab and remote user studies. The comparison between the designed multi-touch interaction and its desktop alternative yields promising results, showing improved performance and higher satisfaction of the end-user for the touch-based approach, that lay the groundwork for a smarter factory vision based on remotely-operated AM.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/15/4255Industry 4.0customer-centric manufacturingcomputer-aided designmulti-touch interactionhuman-centered computinghandheld devices |
| spellingShingle | Ivan Rodriguez-Conde Celso Campos Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface Sensors Industry 4.0 customer-centric manufacturing computer-aided design multi-touch interaction human-centered computing handheld devices |
| title | Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface |
| title_full | Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface |
| title_fullStr | Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface |
| title_full_unstemmed | Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface |
| title_short | Towards Customer-Centric Additive Manufacturing: Making Human-Centered 3D Design Tools through a Handheld-Based Multi-Touch User Interface |
| title_sort | towards customer centric additive manufacturing making human centered 3d design tools through a handheld based multi touch user interface |
| topic | Industry 4.0 customer-centric manufacturing computer-aided design multi-touch interaction human-centered computing handheld devices |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/15/4255 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ivanrodriguezconde towardscustomercentricadditivemanufacturingmakinghumancentered3ddesigntoolsthroughahandheldbasedmultitouchuserinterface AT celsocampos towardscustomercentricadditivemanufacturingmakinghumancentered3ddesigntoolsthroughahandheldbasedmultitouchuserinterface |