August 19, 2013
Mahiro Yamashita, a third-year student in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and a member of the Yasuaki Kakehi Laboratory, won 1st Place in the Undergraduate Research Category at the Student Research Competition held at ACM SIGGRAPH 2013, the world's largest international conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies.
The ACM Student Research Competition is a competition for graduate and undergraduate students that has been held since 2003. Mr. Yamashita received the award for his research titled "enchanted scissors: a Scissor Interface for Support in Cutting and Interactive Fabrication." After first exhibiting a prototype at last year's Open Research Forum (ORF) 2012, he continued to make improvements, and his efforts culminated in this award.
"enchanted scissors" is an interface that focuses on scissors, a common crafting tool. He developed scissors with a mechanism that dynamically controls their opening and closing: when the blades touch a line drawn with graphite or conductive ink, the capacitance value changes, triggering the control. This enables new experiences, such as cutting lines drawn on paper more accurately or cutting by relying on haptic feedback, and is an initiative that expands the creative possibilities of crafting with scissors.
Additionally, the 2nd Place prize was awarded to Atsushi Masumori, who graduated this spring from the Hiroya Tanaka Laboratory at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, for his graduation project at SFC titled "Morphological Computation on Two-Dimensional Self-Assembly System."
Comment from Mahiro Yamashita
I am greatly honored to receive this award at the SRC. I have been working on this research for a year and a half, and it has been an invaluable experience to receive feedback from so many people at a venue like SIGGRAPH, which has helped clarify the positioning and future prospects of my research. Also, I feel that I was able to face the judging process calmly because the conference venue happened to be near my hometown. I am grateful to Professor Kakehi for giving me numerous opportunities to present, and to my lab members, friends, and family for their constant and complete support. I will continue to devote myself to my research and hope to introduce "enchanted scissors" to the world at the Grand Final next year.
→ACM Student Research Competition Website
→Kakehi Laboratory
Issued by: General Affairs (Public Relations), Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office