Background:

In the depths of Southern New Jersey there lives the mythical Jersey Devil, a monster so fierce and revered that no one dares travel to its swamps. I was ready to find the worst, and instead found Rodney.

This is his story.

How It Works:

A proximity sensor, built onto the base of the robot, checks for objects within a predetermined range every 1 second. If an object enters the sensor’s range, the neck of the robot collapses into its body. This action is achieved by choreographing the movement of the base & middle servos, which act as the robot’s neck joints. Once the object leaves the sensor’s range, the robot “pops” its head back out by powering the two neck servos.

The top servo motor, which is the smallest of the three, moves the eyes of the robot back and forth when the neck is fully elongated. The servo motor moves the eyes back to their original position when an object enters the sensor’s range.

The sound module plays audio clips while an object is outside the sensor’s range. When an object gets within range, the audio track stops.

Testing:

Construction:

• The skeleton of Red Red is made of (3) three scrap pieces of wood found at the ITP shop.
• The neck is made of thin aluminum sheet strips.
• The body cavity is made of (2) two oatmeal barrels.
• The fur is made of “fancy” red yarn (that’s what the store calls it, I like it because it feels, well, furry).
• The extremities is made of styrofoam and tube cleaners.

Notes:

• The LEDs are used as status lights.
• Green LED lights up when the audio-module is playing files.
• Red LED gets brighter as an object gets closer to the proximity sensor.
• The potentiometer is used to set the signal strength from the audio module to the  LM386N chip.

List of parts (Bill of Materials):

• (1) Arduino
• (1) LM386
• (1) Audio-Sound Moule – SOMO-14D
• (1) Infrared Proximity Sensor Long Range – Sharp GP2Y0A02YK0F
• (2) Servo – Large Full Roation
• (1) Servo – Small
• (3) TIP120
• (1) LD33CV
• (1) Speaker – 0.5W 8ohm
• (2) 220 uF capacitor
• (1) 100 uF capacitor
• (1) 10 uF capacitor
• (1) 1K resistor
• (2) 470 ohm resistor
• (2) 10 ohm resistor
• (1) 10K potentiometer
• (1) Red LED
• (1) Green LED

Resources:

• ITP Physical Computing Tutorials
• Audio-Sound Module Datasheet
• LM386 Audio Amplifier

Solutions:

• Arduino Code
• Breadboard Layout
• Schematic Diagram

Snapshots:

Easter Egg:

Assignment: “Final project. Create a physically interactive system of your choice.  Your focus in this assignment should be on careful and timely sensing of the relevant actions of a person or people that you’re designing this for, and on clear, prompt, and effective response. Any interactive system is going to involve systems of listening, thinking, and speaking from both parties. Whether it involves one cycle or many, the exchange should be engaging.”

For the final project, I will be building a Japanese pop-art inspired shy robot. When she realizes she’s alone, she will dance and call out for her friends to play with her. When strangers approach her, she will become scared and go into ‘panic mode’, by literally collapsing upon herself and ignoring anyone around her.

The robot will have two stages, happy & panic. Below is a list of details for each stage:

Happy

• Standing position
• Tilts back and forth
• Calls out for friends

Panic

• Kneeing position
• Turns off all lights to give the sense of being turned off

Bill of Items (as of 11/21/10)

• One (1) infrared proximity sensor long range (Sharp GP2Y0A02YK0F)
• One (1) JST Right Angle Connector Through-Hole 3-Pin
• Two (2) large full rotation servo motors
• One (1) small servo motor
• One (1) audio-sound module (SOMO-14D)
• One (1) 0.5W 8Ohm speaker
• One (1) Arudino Duemilanove

This project is based off the idea of ‘the most useless box’, where a box turns its switch to the off position a user flicks the box’s switch to the on position. MAKE Magazine calls a different version of this idea the ‘suicide bot 3000′.

Ladies and gentlemen, my group’s media controller project.

In a nutshell, MousePed is a giant mouse pad music controller for your feet. Step on one of the 15 pads hidden underneath the mouse pad, change the volume of individual tracks.

Equipment for this project is as follows:

• (1) Arduino
• (1) CD74HC4067
• (15) 100-ohm resistors
• (15) home-made pressure sensors
• (1) XBee Wireless Shield
• (1) XBee Explorer Dongle
• (2) XBee 1mW Chip Antennas

A few notes of ome of the equipment:

• CD74HC4067 chip – Arduino decides which of the 16 available channels to listen to by using a 4 level truth-table.
• XBee Wireless System – Both XBee Antennas talk to each other using the handshake method. This method makes sure that the buffer will not overflow by only sending data when requested.

References used are from CD74HC4067 datasheet, Tronixstuff (XBee shield),  and ITP Tutorials (XBee modules).

Solutions:

• Arduino Code
• Processing Code
• Breadboard Layout
• Schematic Diagram
• Project Page!

Lab:

Arduino Code

In this lab, a h-bridge is used to control the direction of a DC motor. On the h-bridge (L293NE), if logic pin 1 is High & logic pin 2 is low, the motor will turn right. If the logic pins’ values are inverted, the motor will turn left. If both pins have the same value, the engine motor will stop quickly.

A DC motor can only go left or right, depending on the direction of the current. By using an h-bridge, the direction of current can be changed instantly.

Lab:

Arduino Code

For this lab, a DC motor needs (12) volts to operate properly. The motor can be connected to PWR and GND directly, but there will be no way to control if it is either on or off. An Arduino can be used to control the motor, except that the Arduino can give five (5) volts at most. By adding a transistor to the circuit, a low current device can control a high current one. The DC motor is connected to the PWR of  (12) twelve volts. In order for the circuit to go to common GND, it must pass through the transistor. The transistor allows the circuit to be completed when the Arduino gives a positive current to the transistor.

Overall, a good lab.

This phase took a while get get off the ground. My colleagues and I knew that we had to not only finish constructing the sensor pads, but actually figure out what type of media it would control.

We gathered in a classroom and started to pitch ideas to each other again. Some where good ideas, some where awful ideas, but we knew we couldn’t leave until we had an idea we liked. Since we couldn’t come up with the perfect idea, we started testing the pads. They where placed on the floor and had a yoga mat placed above them, so they could be stepped on without people getting injured. While the pads where being tested and calibrated, someone else in the room started playing music, and Fernanda eventually started dancing on the pads. When we saw the graphical results of Fernanda’s dancing on the pads, we figured out exactly what the project would control.

We decided to create a yoga pad that will control the volume of an array of ambient sounds in a room. The volume in return will control the lighting of the room.

Now that we knew exactly what the controller is manipulating, everyone was assigned tasks. Hardware construction & wiring was assigned to Fernanda; Software & Processing was assigned to Toby; Hardware and user interace was assigned to me.

Given that we had quite a few pads to finish, I helped Fernanda on the construction of the pads. I got quite a few burns soldering mesh with jumper wires. No pain no gain, right?

With serial communication, there is a potential for users to change the Processing sketch. A limitation that came up quickly in my mind was having a wire between the Arduino and the computer. It would be nice if there was an ‘invisible cable’ to connect both devices together. Thankfully, there is; its called wireless.

This demo features wireless ability with XBee. As you can see in the photo, there seems to be a few more things than just an XBee module. Parts used for this demo include:

• (2) XBee modules
• (1) XBee USB Dongle – also possible to use a XBee USB Explorer
• (1) XBee Wireless Shield – also possible to use just a XBee breakout board.

An important thing to note is that the XBee works at 3.3V, and if given more it will fry. The USB Dongle and Wireless Shield have the regulator built in, but if I was to use the breakout board, I would either create my own regulator or us a prebuilt voltage regulator board.

In order to get the XBees to talk to each other, I used Tom Igoe’s XBee Serial Terminal for Processing. It was also highly suggested to use CoolTerm (free).

Once the XBees are setup to recognize each other, its ready to be used. The video above shows two potentiometers controlling the x & y coordinates of a ball in Processing wirelessly.

Lab:

Punctuation Method: Arduino Code, Processing Code

Handshake Method: Arduino Code, Processing Code

In this lab, two potentiometers and a pushbutton communicate to a Processing sketch via USB cable.

For both methods, the data being sent in ‘packets’, using the return carriage to mark the end of a packet and commas as dilimiters. In the punctuation method, data is constantly being fed from Arduino to Processing. In the handhshake method, data is only sent from Arduino to Processing when Processing asks for the data.

Personally, I prefer using the handshake method. The idea of data being constantly sent, when it might not be required, seems a waste of resources. There is also a chance that the incoming data could show down the device receiving the data.

• Phantom limbs plague some amputees.
• By touching the stump, some amputees feel that their phantom limbs are also being touched.
• Certain areas of the stump where mapped to certain areas of the ghost limb.
• If F.A. was ask to rotate his phantom arm, the map would rotate also.
• Maps of phantom limbs can also be on the face.
• All of our senses (touch, smell, taste, hear) are constructed.
• Touch is normally referred to to check if something is real.
• If the maps can contradicting information, the phantom limb would alternate between them.
• It possible to construct complex maps.
• The somatosensory cortex controls touch and feel. The more sensitivity a body part had, the bigger map they had in the cortex.
• It is possible for sections in the map of the cortex to invade nearby sections.
• It is also possible to erase sections of a map.
• They still have sensation, they just cannot “construct recognizable objects of touch”.
• In the “cutaneous rabbit”, if a subject is given two taps on his/her forearm, they feel other taps between the two given.
• Touch is an important sense, but our understanding to control it is minimal compared to sight.
• The sense of virtual touch is exploited in video games.
• Soon we will be able to take complex touch-related feelings and create virtual maps for them.
• “This is a challenging range of feels to create. But where there’s a market, there’s a way.”
• The idea of construction the response to feeling will be helpful for surgeons, where they can get practice, get the feel, of operating without practicing on actual people.

The mapping of the senses would be a great benefit in the realm of virtual reality. People will be able to get almost a full experience of places or situations that they will never get the chance to partake in reality.

In the two main buildings that make up NYU Stern, there are special entryways for students to use. Instead of having security check everyone’s ID, they allow the entryway gates to do it. Ideally, a student walks up to the gate, swipes their card, gains access to the building by having the glass gates swing open. It is a very simple device that is meant to keep non-NYU people out of the building.

I located myself in the corner of the lobby to watch how these entryways are used. Given that it was a crowded lobby during the lunch hour, I blended with the students. The majority of students walk up with their cards in their hands and ready to swipe as they get near the entryway. They then have to wait for a second or two become the device gives then the green arrow and the gates swing open. The gate seems to work for most students.

Then there are those students who have issues with the entryways. Some of them do not have their cards ready, so they have to stop, block pedestrian traffic while they look for their card. Other times students swipe their cards, and the gate doesn’t grant them access. Students either get frustrated or annoyed, and try multiple times until the gates swing open. At closer inspection, the card has to be swiped with the magnet strip facing away from the student in order for the machine to read it. Other issue that seems to handicap the entryway is that the card reader is placed horizontal to the student. This causes a significant amount of traffic as students stop, swipe their cards, and wait for the gate to open

If the card reader was placed vertically, it would allow students to swipe and walk at the same time, decreasing waiting time and pedestrian congestion in front of the entryway. Another modification that would help would be if the card reader was designed to so that it can read the the magnetic strip either way it was inserted into the device. With these two modifications, the interaction with the entryway would be exponentially faster.

A good transaction takes about 2-3 seconds, while a bad transaction takes over 5 seconds.

Another thing to point out is that the designer of this entryway assumes the users are predominantly right-handed. If the left-handed reader is swiped, the gate on the left of the user will open instead of the one if front of him/her. I guess its assumed that the majority of users will be right-handed.