Digitizing Interlocking Building Blocks

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Date
2023
Authors
Lieb, Sebastian
Thormählen, Thorsten
Rieger, Felix
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
Interlocking building blocks (such as LEGO®) are well-known toys and allow the creation of physical models of real objects or the design of imaginative 3D structures. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for digitizing building blocks with the original LEGO® form factor. We add a microprocessor to each 4 x 2 block, and the blocks communicate with each other via a two-wire connection provided in every nub. This poses the additional challenge that communication and power supply must use the same two-wire connection, which is addressed by alternating between the two modes over time. We introduce a protocol that checks for connections and propagates all connection information through the block network. We can then pass this information to a connected computer, which reconstructs the structure of the block network. We present several successfully digitized example configurations and discuss failure cases. Furthermore, two end-user scenarios are demonstrated, which show the potential of our approach as an intuitive human-computer interface.
Description

        
@inproceedings{
10.2312:vmv.20231221
,
booktitle = {
Vision, Modeling, and Visualization
},
editor = {
Guthe, Michael
 and 
Grosch, Thorsten
},
title = {{
Digitizing Interlocking Building Blocks
}},
author = {
Lieb, Sebastian
 and 
Thormählen, Thorsten
 and 
Rieger, Felix
},
year = {
2023
},
publisher = {
The Eurographics Association
},
ISBN = {
978-3-03868-232-5
},
DOI = {
10.2312/vmv.20231221
}
}
Citation
URI
https://doi.org/10.2312/vmv.20231221
 https://diglib.eg.org:443/handle/10.2312/vmv20231221
Collections
VMV2023