Anthony "Tony" Ruto
Director of Research Engineering at the design software firm Autodesk, Anthony Ruto grew up in a small town in rural Kenya, Africa, before moving to the city of Nairobi and then to Britain when he was 17. Tony attended Cambridge University, where he studied computer-based design and developed new ways of scanning human bodies that made it possible to build improved avatars for movies, video games, clothing designers, and other applications. In his first job, Tony created a way to continuously monitor tiny movements by patients undergoing radiation treatment for cancer, making the process much safer. He now works in “generative design” at Autodesk and has led engineering projects ranging from totally new designs for chairs to improved Formula 1 racecars.
Real World Application
- Tony talks about filling a stadium with virtual characters for a movie like The Gladiator. Suppose you had 4 hairstyles, 4 face variations, 3 skin colors, and 5 body shapes to work with. How many different characters could you make? If your stadium is showing 18,000 people in a scene, how many times would the same character repeat?
- If you had a cylinder that was 5-feet tall and had a radius of 1 foot and then draped fabric on every surface except the bottom, how much material would you need?
Group Discussion / Activity
- What would you like to ask Tony that wasn’t covered in the video?
- Tony talked about taking things apart and putting them back together as a child. How do you think that influenced his ability to think inventively? What have you taken apart that you’ve been surprised by? Were you able to put it back together?
- Tony mentions that he worked to reduce the number of data points in body scans to represent the human shape. You will try to do the same for the shape of a chair. Each group is to take measurements from 2 differently shaped chairs. After taking those measurements, determine the specific measurements that the chairs have in common and the key measurements that make them different from each other. How could your team use this information to develop a line of chair covers that, with minor tweaks, could be made to fit the shape and size of different chairs?
Video Project
- Create a video short: using the interview with Tony and other images you find online about generative design, make a 1-minute video that would excite other students age about science and technology. Decide whether it is for kids your age or for younger students.
Invention Challenge
Invent a way to take something physical (a sketch on paper, a pet, something you made in art class, etc.) and make it digital.
- Explore It: Whether it’s taking a physical object and creating a digital representation of it, or taking a drawing and knowing how to build it physically, the interaction between the two methods is changing fast at present and being used in many different ways.
- Create It: Design a way to digitize something physical.
- What are you digitizing? Why will this be a useful invention, and who will it help?
- What problems might you encounter?
- Why is a digital version more useful than a physical version? Does it save space, convey information, or something else?
Invent a new furniture design
- Explore It: Furniture serves a variety of functions, ranging from a place to sit to storage for clothes, dishes, or other items. Some pieces are enclosed, others are open; some are heavy, others are light. Sometimes the function is obvious, but sometimes there are hidden compartments.
- Create it: Sketch a piece of furniture you would want to build. Using a free account on Tinkercad www.tinkercad.com, create a digital, 3-dimensional (3D) model of your design. How is your digital design different from your sketched design? Now that you have a 3D model what are some ways you could turn your design idea into reality? If you chose to change the shape or size of your design, how could you do that in the digital version?