Artificial Creature for Human Computer Interaction Lab Week
Groups of 5 people working on one final product 8 hours a day for 9 days. We did not have any guideline except from the topic we chose to be working in, in my case artificial creatures.
TEAM
5 Designers
DESIGN AREA
Physical Prototyping
YEAR
2019
HCI Lab Week Aftermovie - Edit by Charlotte
The Product
What is it?
The product is a recreational and interactive caveman with its own house, a cave. It relates to the topic of artificial creatures because it has been made using electronic hardware and programmed via software, it express its emotions and is a creature that humans can interact and spend time with.
How does it work?
The caveman is divided essentially in two parts, plus his cave. The first one is the lower one, an ultrasonic sensor car powered by one Arduino and using a front facing ultrasonic sensor to detect people in front of it. The second one is the higher part of the creature, the "head", powered by one Arduino as well. It has one input that is the copper beard, and three different type outputs: servomotors (2x) as eyebrows; LED matrix (2x) as eyes; a buzzer to represent its communication system. Software-wise, the copper beard detects when it has been touched; when this happens, Arduino will set a certain tilt to the eyebrows and a specific animation to the eyes, together with a sound. There are four types of "emotions" that the caveman can express: happy, angry, very angry, and bored. For example, if you touch the beard a couple of times it is still happy, but if you touch it too much it will get angry.
Here's a flowchart representing how the software works:
The only way for the user to interact with it is through its copper beard: if the beard is touched one or two times, the caveman will be happy. If it is touched three or four times it will get angry and if touched five or six times it will be even more angry. Eyes are the same as angry but showing also hashtags and exclamation marks. If touched more times, it will get sad. When the user gets to this point, the loop will start again.
The cave is used to give the creature a real context and make the user feel more engaged with it.
Early sketches of the cave:
The Process
Day 1
We had completely no idea yet of what to do at that point, so we started experimenting with Arduino in general and then connected to a 16x2 LCD display, and with the AIY voice kit (a DIY Google Assistant). After building it and playing with the kit, we got to the conclusion that the background noise was too loud, so we exluded it from our possibilities. Regarding the display, we practiced with side-scrolling text and then we added two buttons that would show a different text each. During the final hours of the day we thought of doing some kind of motivational creature that speaks with different buttons for different moods, and it will tell you something motivating through the display.
Day 2
Everyone focused on their own way to practise with Arduino and become familiar with it. Viktorija and I were practicing with buttons and the display. Buttons were representing the mood of a person, and when she press it she would receive one of the motivational sentences that we wrote for that specific mood. Karen and Charlotte were experimenting with different kinds of inputs such as light, temperature, and touch sensors, and Art was practicing with an obstacle-avoidance car using ultrasonic sensors on the front, that could have been used as a base for the motivational creature.
Day 3
After the daily standup, we discussed on how to embed the obstacle-avoidance car together with the motivational creature. On the technical side we still did not decide, but we thought on covering both car (wheels included) and creature with some flexible and cheap material.
The creature has been implemented in three core points: eyebrows, powered by two servomotors, to determine the facial expression together with two 8x8 LED matrix, that will function as eyes. The third point, that still needs to be planned, is a creature-beard made of copper that is touch sensitive, and will communicate through a buzzer emitting robotic sounds, instead of actually speaking the human language.
In the late afternoon we all discussed on how to make our creature from an aesthetic point of view with some early sketches.
Day 4
The less productive day in a technical sense, but we spent a lot of time thinking on how our creature will look. We will use a styrofoam ball to make our outputs (servos and LED matrix) fit and not move, and all this will be covered by a fur and placed on the car, that will be covered as well. Ultrasonic sensors of the car will be used to detect if there is actually a person in front of it. If so, you will be able to interact with it, otherwise it will go back inside his headquarter/cave. A flowchart was made to describe its functioning.
After the daily standup we created a list of requirements and prioritized them with the MoSCoW method. We also made a list of all the components that we needed for our final concept.
At this point, our SCRUM board looked like this:
Day 5
Today I was personally experimenting with the "capacitive-beard" and understand its functioning. For simplicity, instead of the actual beard the output was only an LED that would act differently based on how hard the beard was touched. The LED will need to be replaced with our 3 outputs: servo eyebrows, LED matrix eyes, and buzzer sounds. All these will be different based on the emotion of the creature, that vary based on how its beard is touched: it can be angry, sad, happy or bored.
Here's a first look at the structure of our creature.
Day 6
Until yesterday, the LED connected to the beard was changing its light state depending on how hard you pressed the beard. After some discussion, we decided for it to change based on how many times the copper beard is touched. Then, to make it more real, we are now using the actual eyes (led matrix), eyebrows (servos) and voice (buzzer) that change emotion and consequently face expression based on how many times you touch the beard. If you touch it too many times for example (more than 5), eyes and eyebrows will show anger, with an annoyed robotic sound emitted from the buzzer. I was working on this with Art, while other members of the group focused on the “cave” for our creature, where it will stand if no people are standing in front of it. In the late afternoon, we were checking the whole code and fixing minor issues.
Today went slower than usual because of some unexpected issues.
Day 7
Today was all about the cave of our creature for me and Viktorija, to give a context to our creature, while the others were fixing the code and connections of the "head" of our creature, other than helping us with the cave. For the realization of our cave we used mainly cardboard, covered by paper balls sticked to it. All of this needed to be covered with a brown paper to give it the look of a real cave. Since then, we started to call our creature "The Caveman", that started to have an actual look.
Day 8
Today as well has been pretty much about the aesthetics of our caveman. The car was covered with cardboard and then with the brown paper, to give it the same look as the cave. The cave has been covered with paper and finalized adding some paper rocks around it, and the fur has been painted of a dark green color, so we put everything together in a provisional way.
At the end of the day everything we tested was working fine. About half an hour before leaving it stopped working. We will analyze and solve that tomorrow.
Day 9 - Expo Day
Exposition day. We had to fix our Caveman and test it in order to be sure everything was properly working. The problem we had the previous day was solved with new batteries, since it was a power supply problem. Now that everything was working, it needed to be optimally adjusted. The car was driving for a too short distance, so Art fixed this in the code. Additionally, the car was not driving fully straight so two rails were built, in order for the car to follow a perfectly straight line and not crash into the "walls" of the cave. We are now ready for the expo.
As soon as the exposition started, our caveman got problems. It seemed like the two Arduinos (one for the head, one for the car), were not receiving enough power. The only solution we could adapt was to unplug the Arduino of the car and only leave the head of our caveman working. This still included the main feature, meaning you can still fully interact with it and it will respond to you, with the only exception that it does not go in and out of the cave.
The good thing is that regardless of the ability to move, people who interacted with our creature had a great time and a lot of laughters.
