Whisker Evaluation: Ding, Yingri

Evaluation of Liang, Wanfang and Ayo's whisker:

The biggest advantage of this whisker is its potential for a system of whiskers. We imagine that each whisker has a very different potential that it can interact with each other in a very distinct way. In our opinions, they have a sound narrative and value about their whisker. At the same time, we also has a question that besides the "heart" lights up, what other interactions or output the whisker can display?

For future improvement, the whiskers can be grouped into different types that can have different abilities. Therefore, this can expand the possibility of provoking more interaction or value gain from the audience.

Also, are we targeting a specific audience or just the general public? What is the main goal or learning point for the users to take from using these "creatures"? Maybe they can serve as a deeper purpose beside locating each user.

We have some other questions about its value such as what is the general direction the makers want to take from this point onwards? What do the makers want to take from the making process by the end the semester?

Overall, this is a well executed whisker with possible expansion in the future.

Evaluation of our whisker:

In the last week’s whisker, we tried to make a mechanical edition of “hedgehog” (or porcupine) whisker, which will retract to make its whiskers outwards when people get too close to it. We want to make it kind of metal structure to simulate animals’ reactions. The first thing we want to achieve is to make it shrink when sensing people get too close, which is our main focus last week.

As our thought, we want to use a gear system to drive two edges of a flexible frame so that it will move toward to the opposite directions. The gear is driven by a servo fixed in the bottom and controlled by an Arduino board with an IR sensor detecting people’s distance.

We made several tries to make it work. At first there has no fixed device to fix the chain so that it easily deviated its desired route. Then we add a foundation bed with four screw caps fixed in the four corner with the distance between those two is exactly the size of diameter of a gear and width of two chains. In this way, the gear could be driven by the servo easily.

But there is another problem after that iteration. Since there is no enough weight on the top of the fixed device to make it still, it’s kind of easy to make the whole frame spin rather than shrink. Maybe next iteration we need to make a bracket to hold the fixing device. With paper model, it’s more light and flexible. When it comes to acrylic and metals, it become less flexible. A 3D print model to make it a whole connection may be a better choice to keep it balance and stable.

Whisker Second Prototype from Patti Guan on Vimeo.