They presented their results at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles last July. And they achieved this simply with… a 3D printer. They designed flat shapes capable of transforming themselves into free-form structures—3D objects with smooth curves—which they named CurveUps. Bernd Bickel's team devised the necessary software tools and technology: they print small tiles flat, then sandwich them between two layers of stretched latex. The tension draws the tiles together to form a continuous "skeleton," making it possible to create gently curved surfaces from what are, in fact, flat pieces…
A description of their work in English:
