Co‑Creating the Physical World: AR and Robotics for Human‑AI Collaboration in Design and Manufacturing

Augmented reality is reshaping how humans interact with artificial intelligence, robotics, and the physical world around them. Specifically, this talk explores how AR, generative AI, and robotics can transform the way we design and make physical things. Beyond visualization, AR bridges the digital and physical world, enabling new ways for humans and machines to co‑create.  

The talk presents a series of research projects that examine how AR can mediate human creativity, agency, and automation across different stages of manufacturing and physical making. These include AR‑enabled high‑precision fabrication of glue‑laminated timber beams in complex construction environments; physics‑based simulation for designing active‑bending modular bamboo structures; gesture recognition in AR for embodied human‑robot collaboration in fabrication processes; object recognition for tracking assembly parts and adapting instructions in real time; and natural‑language interaction with generative AI to better communicate intent to robots in AR.

Together, these systems illustrate how AR evolves from a precision tool into an intelligent collaborator in physical making. Rather than proposing a single “right” model of interaction, these projects explore a spectrum of approaches to human-AI co‑creation using AR. The talk points toward a future of design and fabrication where AR serves as the spatial interface linking human creativity, artificial intelligence, and robotics.