Introduction

Welcome to the Visual Design and Engineering Lab at Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering Department. Our primary objective is to create new theories and methodologies that enhance early phases of engineering design through novel computational technologies. Our current work involves research in geometric knowledge capture and reuse, 3D geometric design, design synthesis from examples, augmented reality, sketch recognition, and human cognition. The primary applications of our research are in the areas of computer-aided design, industrial product design, pen-based computer applications, surgical plannning and diagnosis tools, and educational technologies.

Research Interests

Intelligent Design Interfaces

Trainable design assistants
Pen-based user interfaces
Virtual/Augmented reality
Conceptual design tools
Design innovation
Artificial Intelligence in design
Human-computer interaction

Computational Geometry & Solid Modeling

Curve and surface design
Free-form geometric modeling
Physically-based modeling
Computational aesthetics and styling
Bio-Medical Modeling and Simulation

Design Methodology & Automation

Computational design tools
Computer aided design
Design reasoning
Spatial & geometric reasoning
Qualitative physics

Director

Levent Burak Kara
Associate Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
Mechanical Engineering Department
Scaife Hall 408C
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
lkara@cmu.edu
Phone: (412) 268-2509

Lab Contact

Visual Design and Engineering Lab

Carnegie Mellon University
Mechanical Engineering Department
Wean Hall 3412
5000 Forbes Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Phone: (412) 268-7436

Administrative Assistant

Christine Lambrou
Scaife Hall 422
clambrou@andrew.cmu.edu
Phone: (412) 268-2908

February 2011
Prof. Kara is promoted to Associate Professor.

September 2011
Mehmet Ersin Yumer passed the PhD qualifiers.

August 2011
Our paper Sketch-Based Image Editing Using Clothoid Curves received the best paper award at DMS Visual Languages and Computing.

August 2011
Prof. Kara received 2011 ASME Design Automation Young Investigator Award.

October 2010
Erhan Batuhan Arisoy passed the PhD qualifiers.

July 2010

Prof. Kara and Prof. Shimada received NSF funding for the proposal titled "Creativity Meets Constraints - Sketch-Based CAD for Industrial Designers with Engineering Constraint Management."

May 2010
Prof. Kara was awarded the Professor of the Year award by the MechE Senior Class of 2010.

November 2009
Prof. Kara was featured in this news article that appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

October 2009
Luoting Fu, Mark Fuge and Gunay Orbay passed the PhD qualifiers.

May 2009
Prof. Kara was awarded the NSF CAREER award by the NSF Engineering Design and Innovation (EDI) program.

May 2009
Mark Fuge received the best poster award with his work titled "A testing method and cognitive model of human diagram understanding for automating design sketch recognition" at the CIT Honor's Research event.

May 2009
The final project expo of the Senior Design course took place. Click here to download pictures from the event [zip].

April 2009
Three papers by Luoting Fu, Gunay Orbay and Mark Fuge have been accepted to ASME IDETC 2009 conference in San Diego in Septmeber.

April 2009
Prof. Kara gave research talks at PTC and WPI Computer Science Department.

March 2009
Publication list is updated.

February 2008
Prof. Kara gave talks at NASA Ames and Palo Alto Research Center.

January 2009
Prof. Kara and Prof. Shimada, have been developing a software called SketchCAD for designing new cars.

September 2008
Prof. Kara was recently featured in an article that appeared in ASME's Mechanical Engineering magazine.