Final Project Proposal: Liang

Project: Inkative

INTRODUCTION

Project Intent

What does the interaction between humans and living creatures looks like? I hope Inkative be such a platform that records and depicts the dynamic interactive process in a tangible way. It is able to convert little creatures' (like gold fishes, bees, flies) reaction to surrounding stimulus into something that can be recognised and described. To some extent, it will provide a novel way for people to observe and learn how to communicate with these little lives.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

The original idea of this project came from a episode of film "Sherlock Holmes" (here). Out of curiosity about how people's behaviours or environmental changes affect little live creatures' behaviours, I started to read and review literatures and works of other researchers and artists. Here lists some of them:

David Bowen's fly works

fly revolver (2013) [link]: A revolver is controlled by the activities of a collection of houseflies, which are monitored via video  in an acrylic sphere. The revolver aims in real-time according to files' relative positions on the target. If a fly is detected in the center of the target the trigger of the revolver is pulled.

fly drawing device (2011) [link]: Based on the subtle movements of several houseflies, a artificial device is made to produce drawing on a wall. The drawing is composed of random and discrete strokes. There is a big sphere with a chamber on the top. When flies enter the chamber the device is triggered to begin the drawing.

Tangible Design's Picidae Chorus [link]

It is a kinetic, light and sound installation featuring 7 geometric birds, installed in the woods. It is lit up as the birds pecked a percussion box and slowly fade as they come to a stop. It provides a playful and engaging environment for visitors in the park.

Social Firefly by Jason mcDermott, Liam Ryon, and Frank Maguire (2011) [link]
It is innovative light artwork and also a community of friendly intelligent lights that influence one another. The fireflies are programmed to respond to light from their neighbours. In this community, popular fireflies become highly influential, whilst isolated ones must work harder to reach their friends. People can speak the same language and influence the interaction between community members by shining lights on these fireflies.

In conclusion, these works can be placed into two categories: bio controller and interactive installation. The former only focuses on what kind of outputs can be produced by animals' behaviours, lacking the ability to observe how environment can affect their behaviours. Therefore, it is more like a one-way system which addresses the variations of outputs but ignores the interactive input from ambient stimulus. Contrarily, the latter category focuses on how to simulate creatures with modern technology and fabrication method. It presents an interesting way to explore how animals' behaviours and habits affect people's social activities. So in most cases, installation art is the best form for this kind of system which invites audience to participate in. I hope to create a device based on the ideas of above works, enabling users to interact with animals, recording the dynamic interactive process, producing something can be perceived and studied by humans, and finally helping people better understand the communications with the other living friends on the planet.  

INITIAL DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION

Prototype

Initial prototype is pretty simple. It consists of a large transparent sphere, 3 cameras and a swarm of houseflies. The cameras capture the movements of flies and map them to some digital outputs. The sketch is shown here. However, it fails to find the interaction between flies and people in some prior experiments. The possible reason is that the sphere is too large for flies to recognise the surrounding changes. So this design is claimed to death.

The project currently aims to observe the interactions between people and little animals. So here the application is about gold fish. The system looks like a stage, the fish tank can be placed on the stage. Two cameras are used to track the positions of gold fish in the fish tank and deliver data to the computer. Beneath the stage there is a chamber which looks like a CNC. In this chamber it will control a brush moving in 3D space to draw on a ink paper. Unlike CNC, it is has circular structure. A stepper motor is set at the center position enable the upper circular panel to spin. A steel rod is used as a bracket to support another stepper motor to drive the brush. With these two motors and such structure, the brush can go anywhere on a circular plane theoretically. The brush is mounted on a device which is driven by a servo, so that it can be lifted up and down to indicate the animal's vertical position. The form of drawing is Chinese traditional painting because it can reflect the animal's 3D position through the pressure and the amount of water of the brush. In addition, to address the interaction, proximity sensors are used to detect if there are people standing around the platform.

This is a initial sketch for this prototype:

The diagram of the system is:


Materials
Required: masonite wood, steel rod, ink paper, Chinese calligraph brush, acrylic board, felt
Maybe: PLA

Hardware
Required: Webcam, proximity sensor, stepper motor, servo, Arduino, computer, resistor, LED, jumper wire
Maybe: Raspberry Pi

Software
Required: Arduino, openFrameworks, openCV

Fabrication Processes
Laser cutting all plates and parts that the stage needs, including the brackets, the base, the circular plane, gears and any enclosures. For those laser cutting cannot satisfy 3D printing may help.

Budget
Name                                 Price                                  Number
Webcam                            $5.09                                     2
Masonite wood                   $39.95(12''*12'')                     1
Proximity sensor                 $13.95                                   4+
Arduino Uno                        $29.95                                   1
Brush                                 $4.38                                     1
Ink paper                            $2.00                                     n
Stepper motor                     $16.95                                   2
Servo                                  $8.95                                    1
Acrylic                                $15.00                                   1
Felt                                     $14.30                                  1

Timeline
10/14 - 10/20: schematic design, prototype scope, sketches, technology and material exploration, diagrams.
10/21 - 10/27: components purchase, openCV test in openFrameworks, finish object track and location in 3D environment.
10/28 - 11/03: physical structure design and fabricate all parts, mount circuit, test on stepper motor.
11/04 -  11/10: mount all part and test the mechanism, test on servo.
11/11 - 11/17: complete circuit logic, including the combination of stepper motor and servo, mesh up CV data and circuit program attempt 1.
11/18 - 11/24: mesh up CV data and circuit program attempt 2, andtest the entire system.
11/25 - 12/01: refine design, development and mechanism, test and prepare for final presentation (shoot video demo and final documentation).

Documentations go through the entire design and development process.

Challenges
1. Track fish's position with openCV and openFrameworks.
2. Data processing. Convert location(x,y,z) into the angles applied for stepper motors and the servo.
3. CNC-like mechanism design and fabrication.  

CONCLUSION
Inkative is a platform that records the dynamic interaction between people and fish and converts it into Chinese traditional painting. People are able to study the fish's reaction to ambient stimulus from these paintings. In the future, it can also be applied for other animal, like bees, flies and etc. It has large potential value in assisting people to understand how animals behaviour changes as the environment alters.