UWSpace

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Recent Submissions

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    Shaping Light: Light Modulation Using 3D-Printed PETG
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-08-11) Bunina, Ulyana
    This thesis investigates how parametrically designed, 3D-printed Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG) surfaces can be used to modulate light in controlled ways. The research examines how material translucency and surface geometry influence lighting effects such as subsurface and layered scattering, directional reflection, and perceptual variability. A computational methodology generates sculptural reliefs and textures in digital models, after which fused deposition modeling is used to study PETG’s plastic deformation during printing. Most 3D printing applications are framed as end-stage production methods, valued for their precision in translating between digital models to physical outputs. However, these approaches do not consider the material’s unique qualities that could be observed beyond strict slicer software parameters. While much of the research has focused on 3D printed ceramics and clay, studies on plastic printing beyond slicer constraints remain limited, leaving PETG’s material behaviour during printing under-explored. This research frames material behaviour as central to the design process, treating it not as a limitation but as a design driver. In this study, print layers are intentionally revealed, while textures with irregularities are investigated for their potential to produce a wide range of optical effects. Through an iterative process, a series of light-modulating screens are fabricated, and their optical qualities are systematically studied. Findings from the study are applied to produce full-scale light fixture prototypes with varying lighting effects that promote user engagement through tactility or adjustability. Luminaires are developed as both adjustable and static systems, enabling the study of controlled and fixed light behaviours. The work positions these material-driven and light-responsive systems as a framework for integrating perceptually dynamic, user-engaging lighting into architectural assemblies and everyday spatial use.
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    Reachable subwebs for traversal-based query execution
    (University of Waterloo, 2014-02-04) Hartig, Olaf; Ozsu, M. Tamer
    Traversal-based approaches to execute queries over data on the Web have recently been studied. These approaches make use of up-to-date data from initially unknown data sources and, thus, enable applications to tap the full potential of the Web. While existing work focuses primarily on implementation techniques, a principled analysis of subwebs that are reachable by such approaches is missing. Such an analysis may help to gain new insight into the problem of optimizing the response time of traversal-based query engines. Furthermore, a better understanding of characteristics of such subwebs may also inform approaches to benchmark these engines. This report provides such an analysis. In particular, we identify typical graph-based properties of query-specific reachable subwebs and quantify their diversity. Furthermore, we investigate whether vertex scoring methods (e.g., PageRank) are able to predict query-relevance of data sources when applied to such subwebs.
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    Perspectives on open data: Issues and opportunities
    (University of Waterloo, 2014-01-27) Cowan, Donald; Alencdar, Paulo; McGarry, Fred
    Open data like big data has become an important new direction in information technology. Governments are releasing data so as to be more transparent and also claiming that open data has substantial economic value. However, there appear to be many issues about open data that are not being discussed. This paper uses several practical examples in an attempt to illustrate many of these issues and allied opportunities, and through them to suggest a partial research agenda around open data.
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    Big open data for enviroinmental information systems
    (University of Waterloo, 2015-12-04) Cowan, Donald; Alencar, Paulo; McGarry, Fred; Palmer, R. Mark; Boston, Trevor; Rozanski, Rigel
    The frequency of extreme weather events has accelerated, an apparent outcome of progressive climate change. Excess water is a significant consequence of these events and is now the leading cause of insurance claims for infrastructure and property damage. Governments recognize that plans for growth must reflect communities needs, strengths and opportunities while balancing the cumulative effects of economic growth with environmental concerns. For such a process to be effective it will be necessary to develop and operate cumulative effect decision support software (CEDSS) tools, and to work closely with all levels of government including watershed management authorities (WMAs) that supply environmental data. Such co-operation and sharing will require a new open and big data information-sharing platform, which is described in this paper as an open and big data platform for environmental analysis and management.
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    Comparison of affect-control theoretic agents and humans in the prisoner's dilemma
    (University of Waterloo, 2015-11-02) Jung, Joshua D. A.; Hoey, Jesse; Morgan, Jonathan H.; Schroder, Tobias; Wolf, Ingo
    Symbolic interactionist principles of sociology are based on the idea that human action is guided by culturally shared symbolic representations of identities, behaviours, situations and emotions. Shared linguistic, paralinguistic, or kinesic elements allow human to co-ordinate action by enacting identities in social situations. Structures of identity-based interactions can lead to the enactment of social orders that solve social dilemmas (e.g., by promoting co-operation). Our goal is to build an artificial agent that mimics the identity-based interactions of humans, and to compare networks of such agents to human networks. In this paper, we take a first step in this direction, and describe a study in which humans played a repeated prisoner's dilemma game against other humans, or against one of three artificial agents (bots). One of the bots has an explicit representation of identity (for self and other), and attempts to optimise with respect to this representation. We compare the human play against bots to human play against humans, and show how the identity-based bots exhibits the most human-like behaviour.