CoDES Faculty Debut Computational Knitting Machine

You might not think of knitting as a form of programming, but it absolutely is, said Sonia Roberts, an assistant professor of Computer Science who is also a core member of the College of Design and Engineering Studies (CoDES) program.

“It’s a great way to get people introduced to computing,” said Roberts. She learned to knit as a child from her mother, who was looking for a way to get her energetic daughter to sit still. “I think it’s also a fantastic way to introduce people to computational manufacturing, if for no other reason than that you can make useful things much faster than with a 3D printer, typically, for something of the same size.”

Roberts gravitated toward researching soft robots, made from flexible, compliant materials, since they are safer for human-computer interaction than robots built from metals or hard plastics, and could be put towards medical uses to help people.

On Feb. 10, Wesleyan’s CoDES program celebrated their new Textiles Hub in the Exley Science Center, featuring a Shima Seiki computational knitting machine during a panel discussion, “Fabricating Fabrics: Design and Computation.” Roberts and Assistant Professor of Art and Design and Engineering Studies Yu Nong Khew were joined by fiber artist and designer Victoria Manganiello and 3D machine knitting researcher Megan Hofmann to talk about knitting as a modern computational manufacturing and design method.

Roberts, who is currently building knitted sensor modules which can be incorporated into a robot body, noted that Wesleyan is the only undergraduate-focused liberal arts school with a computational knitting machine that is available to all students—those in the sciences as well as the arts. She said she prefers to have a large community of users with access to the knitting machine, which is not usually the case at other schools with the same technology. “The larger the population of users, the more likely it is that someone will use it to do something really innovative,” Roberts said.

“There’s a lot of advantages that you have with knitting that you don’t have with other kinds of manufacturing processes,” Roberts added, including the ability to reuse fibers, making knitting an inherently sustainable and reconfigurable manufacturing process. Because knitted sensors are easier to create than traditionally manufactured sensors, they can also be significantly less expensive.

Khew, whose research focuses on regenerative design in the built environment, said that Wesleyan is at the forefront of merging the interdisciplinary processes of knitting machines for both computer science and design. She is interested in the capabilities of the knitting machine to fabricate complex textile structures for advanced soft-mold casting for living materials, such as mycelium (the root-like structure of a fungus like mushrooms). The speed at which the knitting machine can manufacture textile structures increases efficiency in fabrication and production, allowing for more time in the design and growing processes. “Most of my experimental projects use mycelium as a way of absorbing plastics,” said Khew. She has tested growing mycelium, which can break down used COVID face masks into objects such as construction bricks.

Khew and Roberts are currently collaborating on a project using mycelium and knitted cotton—a natural material that the mycelium can break down easily—as a way to direct the growth of mushrooms. “Working with knitting as a soft mold is a good process to allow living organisms to push and pull the material to co-create the form with me,” Khew said.

Khew also said that knitted materials are light and easy to transport for architectural design purposes. “I could create the illusion of form and space just by using a very thin, light, string-like material,” Khew said. “From there I started exploring how to work with materials that have some way of creating space, or creating an object without a very hard, defined boundary.”

Hofmann said knitting is an incredibly rich space to build a language between computers and physical manufacturing in the textile space. “How do we go from the digital world to the physical world and back and forth, and iterate in a meaningful way?” Hofmann asked. Her lab at Northeastern University is focused on assistive technologies for people with disabilities, including medical sensors.

Manganiello said that the craft of knitting led her to computation and that she found knitting to be the best way for her to learn about technology. She said that for her, knitting is a structure to create material objects that tell stories. “Textiles, knitting, and weaving are just as much technology as coding and programming,” Manganiello said.

The CoDES Textiles Hub is located in Exley 509A and is open for students to visit and learn about the process of getting trained on the knitting machine on Thursdays between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00.p.m.