Spoon for eating food 129

The handle of a spoon can be modified in different shapes and sizes to accommodate impaired wrist movements or weak grip of fingers. To reduce the computational cost, the

Bowl or shell

bowl (shell) part and handle are used as separate B-spline models. One of the solutions is to bend the handle so that the bowl part of the spoon faces the person and he/she does not need to bend the wrist to eat from the spoon.

Using the interactive design frame work, bending can be achieved by fixing one end of the spoon handle and applying force on the other part. Figure 7.6(a) shows the handle of initial spoon design. In the design framework, a plane is used to fix a portion of handle and the force is applied by a sphere based tool. Figure 7.6(b) shows the vertical plane and the sphere used to push the handle.

Figure 7.6 (a) Handle of spoon from the initial design (b) A plane is used to fix nodes on one side of the plane (opposite to the direction of normal vector) and a sphere is used to apply force.

During the pre-processing phase, a mass spring mesh is created for the handle shown in Figure 7.6(a) (Please refer to Chapter 5 for detail). A 12×12×12 node mesh was created, from the points generated by using blending matrices. Figure 7.7(a) shows the mass spring mesh of the spoon handle.

Figure 7.7 (a) Mass spring mesh for the spoon handle (b) Fixed nodes (green) and the nodes colliding with the sphere tool (red) (c) Side view the B-spline model showing fixed and colliding nodes.

Collision detection algorithm, developed in this thesis, checks the intersection of the plane with the spoon handle (Please refer to Chapter 3 for detail). All the nodes on one side of the plane (opposite side of the normal vector of plane) are fixed. The fixed nodes do not experience any movement or deformation. Even if these nodes experience internal or external force through spring damper system, these nodes do not move. The nodes (green color) shown in Figure 7.7(b-c), are the fixed nodes detected by the collision detection algorithm.

At the same time, the collision detection algorithm checks the intersection of the tool sphere and the B-spline model. It first determines the intersection of sphere and the convex hull of the spoon handle. Points are generated within the minimum and maximum

range of u and v parameters, determined from the intersection of the tool sphere and the

convex hull. Spheres are generated using these points and intersection test is carried out between the tool spheres and the spheres created on the B-spline surface. More points are generated within the intersecting spheres at the lower level of detail. This process is carried out until the collision detection algorithm determines the region of the B-spline

model colliding with the tool sphere and determines the nodes of the mass spring system which will be experiencing external force. The process of collision detection was explained in Section 3.3. The information about the magnitude of the external force applied through the sphere and the nodes experiencing this force is transmitted the mass spring deformation system. Figure 7.7(b-c) shows the nodes (red color), determined by the collision detection algorithm, which will experience external force.

As soon as a force is applied through the sphere, the B-spline model starts deforming. The upper part of the handle shown in Figure 7.7(b-c) has fixed nodes and therefore, cannot move under the influence of applied force. However, the bottom side of handle is free to move. Figure 7.8 (a) shows the initial design of the spoon handle, experiencing the external force through the tool sphere. Figure 7.8(b) shows an intermediate shape of the handle after a force was applied. Initially the middle portion of the handle was deformed and the free end of the spoon lagged behind the middle portion. However, as the number of iterations increased, the middle and bottom portions got straightened up. Figure 7.8(c) shows the bending of the handle under application of force.

It should be noted that the lower end of the handle will remain straight only if global deformation is allowed. With higher number of iterations the free side of the handle gets enough time to straighten up. In case of local deformation, the portion where force is applied will deform but this deformation will not get enough time to propagate throughout the mass spring mesh. Due to global deformation, the free end of the handle moves enough to keep the bottom side of the handle straight.

By applying forces at different points, the shape is further changed as shown in Figure 7.9(a). Once the initial spoon handle shape is modified using the tools developed in this thesis, the B-spline model is imported in commercially available CAD software

(Rhino®) to refine and add finer details to the model. The refined model for the handle of

the spoon is shown in Figure 7.9(b).

(a) (b)

Figure 7.9 Modified shape of spoon to accommodate lack of wrist movement.

It is possible that the user cannot use fingers to hold the spoon due to lack of movement of fingers, or weak grip. If the user cannot hold the spoon with fingers, then the handle can be modified to for a firm grip using all the fingers. This will also help to effectively counter the torque resulting from the modified design. Again, the tools developed in this thesis can be used to change the shape of the handle.

(a) Handle of the spoon interacting with too sphere

(b) Deformation due to applied force

(c) Modified shape of handle after several interactions

Figure 7.10 Modifying the shape of spoon handle to grip it with all the fingers of hand.

Figure 7.10(a) shows the spoon handle a tool sphere. Again, the collision detection algorithm determines the colliding nodes of the mass spring mesh, which would experience the external force applied through this sphere. As soon as the tool sphere is pulled out, the nodes of the mass spring mesh colliding with the tool sphere (determined by the collision detection algorithm) experience force in the outward direction. The external force acting on the colliding nodes starts pulling these mass spring nodes in the direction of the external force. In this case, local modification is more appropriate because we only intend to change the shape in a small region. Local modification uses small number of iterations and hence, the nodes which are away from the colliding surface do not get enough time to move under the application of the external force. Due to this reason, there is no need to have a plane to fix some of the nodes. Figure 7.10(b) shows the deformation of the handle under the influence of external force applied through the sphere tool. By repeating this process at different points, the handle can be modified to accommodate all the four fingers to grab the handle while eating. Figure 7.10(c) shows the spoon the with modified handle shape.

Once various shapes of the spoon handle are generated, these handles need to be merged with the bowl section of the spoon. The B-spline surface patches merging

algorithm can be used to merge the bowl and handle part to generate various models (Please refer to Chapter 4 for detail).

(a) Bowl and handle of spoon

(b) Point cloud of the bowl and handle of the spoon

(c) Merged B-spline model of spoon

Figure 7.11 Merging bowl and modified spoon handle to generate the B-spline model of a of spoon.

Figure 7.11(a) shows the bowl and the modified spoon model. These parts must be merged to generate an integrated B-spline model of the design concept for a spoon. Due to the modification of the shape of the handle, the knot vector and the common edge of the bowl and handle did not match. Rhino could not merge these B-spline models to generate a single B-spline surface patch. Even when the edges were matched (establishing tangency at the common edge without merging) Rhino did not allow the merging of the surface for being too far apart. The main reason was that when the knot vectors are different, even after matching of the surfaces, certain gaps remain at the common edges. However, the B-spline merging algorithm can merge these surfaces even without matching or manipulating the control points of the B-spline surfaces. Figure 7.11(b) shows the point cloud of the bowl and handle, generated by using blending matrices stored during the pre-processing phase. These point clouds are merged to

generate single matrix of the point clouds, M. Revised number of control points, knot

vector are calculated as discussed in Chapter 4. Using the matrix of points M, revised

These revised blending matrices are further sued to generate a merged, single patch B- spline surface is of the spoon as shown in Figure 7.11(c).

This design can accommodate the lack of wrist movement and the user does not have to rotate his/her wrist. However, due to the bend, the user will experience a torque. Figure 7.12(a) shows the initial design and Figure 7.12 (b-d) show different variations of the design. The design shown in Figure 7.12 (b) can accommodate lack of wrist movement of the user. The designs shown in Figure 7.12 (c-d) provide better grip for different sets of users. These grips can be further modified to suit grip of the user.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 7.12 Investigation of different shapes of a spoon for eating food to accommodate impaired wrist movements or weak grip of fingers. The original design is shown in (a) and design modifications are presented from (b) to (d).

These designs can be evaluated by an industrial designer or a user in the virtual reality environment. The evaluation of the model and user training with a finalized model is presented in Section 7.4.