Physical Computing

As a bachelor project me and my group where assigned with the task to explore different ways of interacting with technical products. The requirement was to include a table in some kind of way. We ended up with using a projector and a modified webcam (that only detected IR) above the table. We also invented a small item which made navigation possible, this item consisted of two IR-leds and a microcontroller so that each one of the item could have a unique ID. We unfortunately ran out of time so the movie represents how far we got.

Members of the group: Niklas Andersson, Johan Ludvigsson, Markus Jansson, Vi Dat Thai, Daniel Gustafsson and Patric Westberg.

Niklas Andersson – Group 14

Developed by DARPA in association with John Hopkins University, US, this electro-mechanical arm just functions like any human arm with blood and flesh. It has got sensors which are attached to the persons shoulder and chest which can sense brain signals from the nerves. As a result when the person wearing the device thinks to lift or move his arm the device actually moves or lifts the arm attached to it. Sounds unreal but DARPA have already come up with the 1st prototype of the device which was tested successfully this year!!! They are developing it specially for the soldiers who have lost their limbs in wars but think of the world of good it will create for those persons who have undergone any kind of amputation.

The prototype 2 aims at creating 27 different kind of movements and temperature sensing for the Arm and they are going to implant or inject the sensors in the body

Video Prototype 1

Video prototype 2

Via :

Best Bionic Arm
Our Most Limb-Like Prosthetic

Blogged By : Abhiroop Gupta (ISD 09)  Group No. 8

I think this object based media concept is interesting because it is very simple,  fun and useful and can be applied  for many different purposes. For example a lot of toys could be made based on it; It also could be used in teaching so that whenever it recognizes an object, gives a description of that or so. The same could be applied in the market for advertising new products at stores for instance. It can have something for every body from children to old people but if it isaccessible for all!

Here is the link for the video: http://www.vimeo.com/4147129

Golnaz Saberi (Group 10)

The Spiritius Coloris was a showcase for the “night of the sounds 2007” at the Bielefeld University. It’s an installation that converts visual input in audible signals. The visual inputs were generated by visitors with the help of colored cubes and recorded with several cameras. Every cube “generates” another sound sample. This samples varied depending on the movement of the cubes.

A video is available at

http://lfsaw.de/art/installations/SpiritusColoris2007.shtml

Unfortunately it’s a bit noisy and there are more than one installation.  Because of this it’s a bit hard to see what cube generates what kind of sound and when but the general idea is distinguishable.

The showcase was realized by Till Bovermann, Rene Tünnermann and Matthias Zenker. All pictures were made by Till Bovermann.

by Alexander Neumann (Group 7)

Everyone loves to listen music while driving. But how do you control your ipod while still focusing in your driving? You can’t! At least with the small buttons and menus iPods have.

David Findlay solved that problem by using an Arduino and a big red button. He solved a common and simple problem by using simple tools, which I find amazing. And he made it available for anyone who wants to build upon his design, say by addindg a skip button for going to the next track.

Project Blinkenlights is a project created in 2001 by Chaos Computer Club in Germany. They are a bunch of Germans, interested in technology, who like to rebuild skyscrapers in to giant low-resolution displays.

They install computer-controlled lights in each window of skyscrapers, and can show simple movies and can also allow people to play Pong and send messages.

Source Project Blinkenlights

Karl Löfholm – Group 13

21th Century “Chonmage” ARider

Now with all the new technologies there are a lot of pretty neat features available for us. If you happen to get an iPhone 3G there is a prototype for an improved GPS hardware.
The Invention of Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. is an interface that goes on a helmet (in the case of the example above is a bike helmet) where the iPhone is placed on top of it using its GPS capabilities and its integrated digital compass it can guide you trough the city to a yet unknown destination for you. The iPhone is attached to an interface that will show you the way in a tailored display only for one eye (sort of a head up display) and it can be retracted and deployed as desired. So far the prototype was tested riding a bike and the design is sort of rudimentary but it has a lot of potential even for driving cars, motorcycles or bikes which can help you a great deal.
I think using the existing technologies and extended in a way that are more simple or more useful in real life is a good way to develop new products. It all start with a few I deas and as they evolve, many great goals and devices can be achieved.
Here is a video of the device in action courtesy of Make Magazine:

Edgar Cuellar Group 12

COMMOTION u know to scream!! then you would win this game !! This interesting project was done by Alexandre Armand and Bram Dauw at the Art University of Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. This is a very interesting car racing game where you accelerate your car with your voice! You can control the speed of the car with any sort of voice you can make .. The drivers/players ought to wear a helmet which has a headphone in it , and the voice from this device is transfered to the circuit , controlling the motion/speed of the car.. I enjoyed a lot seeing the video .. There is so much simplicity and lots of fun involved in the game .

via
Pixel Sumo
website of the game

Blogged by Ranjith Ananthraman(ISD 09) – Group No. – 15

Jinsu Park’s concept pen utilizes a RBG colour scanner and 3 ink cartridges (Red, Blue, and Green) to allow you to draw in any colour around you.  While the design and idea is very neat it does suffer from the technical issue that you can’t reproduce all colours using ink with RBG.  For that CMYK would be needed.

The MIT Media Lab had an all digital project, the I/O Brush, that did achieve the general idea of Park’s concept pen.  They used a camera to capture the colour and touch sensors to control the brush strokes on a back projection touchscreen.

Information/Images from toxel.com and MIT Media Lab.

David Marshall (Group 13)

This has made the rounds on the Internet the past few weeks, but I still think it is pretty interesting (and cute!).

Built by a Frenchman under the alias TotoroYamada, it is a paperbot which monitors your email-account. When you receive a new mail, it does a little dance. It’s a classic combination of fun and function. It is easy to just dismiss these kinds of things, but I do believe there is a place for them in the future – however, their exact use and form may not be know to us now.

If you are interested in how it was built and what it looks like under the paper (skin?), go to this website: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/11086 .

By: Mikael Hjort, Group 2

photo courtesy of Beatbots.net

This is Keepon. It is a dancing robot. Or well, he has an “Rhytmic human-robot social interaction”

He has been around since 2003, and is used mainly in research about social development and communication. He has also been used as a tool for helping people with autism or other development disorders.

Myself has always been amazed and amused by the videos on youtube of him dancing. As shown in this video:

And here is a video of him responding with emotions:

Keepon is developed by Hideki Kozima and programmed by Marek Michalowski and more info can be found on Beatbots.net

/Peter Celion – Group 9

Hej,
This is a simple/tiny project using Arduino. It uses all techniques we learned so far and especially this week’s lab 😉
It uses just 8×8 RGB LEDs, four 74HC595 shift registers, and a DS1307 Real Time Clock chip with backup-battery, and that’s it!
Among four shift registers, three of them control colors ( Red, Green, and blue) of LEDs and the fourth one is used for Controlling the rows. How the clock is read ? easy! Dividing the inner 6×6 LEDs into for 3×3 block and each one is a digit, the top two are hours and the bottom two are minutes. the outer edge LED’s is used for Seconds.
I love simple ideas 🙂

Vodpod videos no longer available.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/
http://vimeo.com/6668031

I also want to introduce you a *fictional* mobile phone called Pomegranate Phone! Nova Scotia used it for advertising purposes it has a video projector, live voice translator, harmonica, coffee maker, and shaving razor, among many other standard features that current leading mobile phones have, but when you click “Release date”,  informations about Nova Scotia and its culture is displayed!!!! see the video :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate_phone

Mehrdad Amirghasemi, Group 2

I think the idea of this design is brilliant, because it does not have much to do (like building circuits or putting a lot of things together) but have the interaction between people and daily-used stuff directly. Almost all the families have pillows, so if each family has one music speaker pillow, then this design is spread all around the world! Besides its dynamic appearance (which means the shapes of pillows can be any type), users can also customize their musical preferences as well. Therefore, this design connects the interaction neatly.

The idea itself is a great inspiration for me. There are trillions of things that can be redesigned or be added by some fun ideas. Why not jumping out of electronics and having more interesting designs with what we use every day?

Information and pictures from http://www.talk2myshirt.com/blog/archives/834

Zhonghao Cai/Group 12

This is a game from the Swedish company Interactive Productline or IP.
When one player is more relaxed than the other the ball will roll away from him/her.
The objective of the game is to make the ball roll all the way to the other players circle on the table. To do all this each player has a number of electrodes on their head that measures the brain waves and determines how relaxed the person is.  Click  Here To visit IP´s home page and find out more.

David Björkman, Group 6

Everyone remembers or at least knows about etch a sketch, and its amazing how few components are needed to create this extremely popular toy.

The two potentiometers control where the “cursor” is and the tilt sensor allows for the control to be shaken to clear the screen, just as with the real toy.

The graphic interface runs on Flash and can be controlled by a arduino board.

Rich Potter – Group 1 via InstantSOUP