Lea Albaugh

AboutRSS

Our system augments an otherwise purely mechanical knitting machine.

The system shows past and possible future states of the machine.

We use lightweight sensing for tracking machine state.

Cam settings are tracked with webcams.

Knits can be 'replayed' on automatic machines.

Work with Scott E. Hudson and Lining Yao

Computational mediation can unlock access to existing creative fabrication tools. By outfitting an otherwise purely mechanical hand-operated knitting machine with lightweight sensing capabilities, we produced a system which provides immediate feedback about the state and affordances of the underlying knitting machine. We describe our technical implementation, show modular interface applications which center the particular patterning capabilities of this kind of machine knitting, and discuss user experiences with interactive hybrid computational/mechanical systems.

Published at CHI 2023.