What to expect for the demo day

Final demo for tangible studio In the final day I would like to demonstrate 2 pieces of arts I am working on in this semester.


1. SENSEable Shoes
Collaborated with Yen-Chia

Intro
Mobile devices with powerful computational abilities are becoming quite popular in recent years, but the user interface of such devices is similar to the desktop-computing system, i.e. GUI plus touch sensing technology. These technologies are not user friendly for pervasive environment because the visual demand and hand requirement can diminish the user experience and impede attention. The goal of this project is to build a foot-computer interface: a newly hand-free and eye-free interactive technology designed for the growing pervasive computing environments. By embedding multiple sensors into consuming shoes, people are allowed to control ambient digital devices with their foot gestures as well as toe gestures.

To achieve this goal, there are a few steps we need to take.
1. We need to build the hardware – the multi-sensor shoe.
2. We need to understand people’s feet manners/behaviors like walking, running, jumping, going upstairs, going downstairs, etc. by employing data mining methods.
3. We build a useful GUI for visualize the data.
4. Real time user test.
5. Quick and cool application.

What we have done:
Hardware design. Checked.
Algorithm design. Partially done.
Data GUI. Partially done.
Realtime user test. No.
Application. A small part.

What to expect
The working hardware. Definitely.
2 to 3 cool demos. (We already have a simple game control demo)



2. Algo.rhythm

Intro
Algo.rhythm is a tangible computational drum kit with programmable behaviors. By arranging and physically connecting a number of drums-bots, each of them records beat patterns from outside world or its precursor, replays the patterns in selectable ways, and passes the rhythm to its neighbors along the drum-bot’s surface in 3D space. The construction of drum-bots and the delivery of the beat patterns provide users a unique opportunity to learn a set of computational concepts like sequential execution, loop, or fork through experiencing the beauty of composing music.

What I have done:
The first, second, third, forth…n but still buggy physical prototypes. In detail, 3 drum-bots with 5 sides input and 4 directional output which demo the basic concept of 3D dimensional drum pattern delivery.

What to expect
3 physical drum-bots.
A demo video.