Automatics

When fabricating, it is common to follow a prescribed set of steps in a tutorial or how-to. While popular, such explicit knowledge resources have many inconsistencies and omissions, use static illustrations, and cannot adapt to drop-in makers or a maker's mistakes. To overcome many of these issues, this work presents Automatics, a novel explicit knowledge resource system that dynamically generates fabrication activities for one or more makers based on their current environmental and fabrication context. Automatics assigns tasks to makers based on the past tools and components the maker was working with, enables makers to recover from mistakes through model regeneration, suggests alternative tools if a needed tool is unavailable or in use, and allows multiple makers to drop-in throughout a fabrication activity. Initial usage and feedback from novice makers showed that Automatics increases the number of tasks that can be completed compared to paper instructions, decreases frustration, and improves one's understanding of the global context of assigned tasks during fabrication activities.