Whisker V4

Based on people's  feedback, we decided to make the camera's whisker longer, so people will be more likely to mess with it. We kept the photoresistor for now; although, we now know that covering the camera's eye is not something that people naturally want to do.

Whisker V3

We were disappointed when the second iteration of our whisker kept falling over during the demo, so the class's positive response to our whisker's disability was a pleasant surprise. We decided to keep the whisker slightly unstable and have it fall when its eye was covered, using a photoresistor to detect the low light. Unfortunately, the sensor was a bit too sensitive, so the whisker kept falling all over the place. The class wasn't able to discover why but had some fun messing around with the little guy who seemed to have broken free from whatever outlet he had been tethered to.

A4: Whisker Evaluation

Evaluation of Our Whisker

Chinwei, Mauricio, and Nissa

 

In this iteration we decided to continue with the idea of our whisker being some sort of exploration bot. In order to give our whisker more life, we decided that it needed to be able to survive without being attached to a clamp, so we added a platform and wheels. While it's not quite working the way it would ideally, our camera whisker now has a motor and servo so it can move and turn. Only two of the original whiskers remain, and the interaction with them has changed since we have made our whisker mobile. These whiskers make the camera turn when they are hit.

Adding wheels to our whisker may not have been the most imaginative thing for us to do. We all thought it was the next logical step. However, adding the wheels has opened up a lot of possibilities, and now we have to figure how our whisker is going to interact with its environment as it moves about. Our whisker is a camera, so we would also like to make use of the fact that it seems to have a giant eye.


We spent a good amount of time working and reworking this iteration. Some photos of the process are below.

Whiskers Iteration 1 - Chin Wei, Nissa, Mauricio

For the first iteration of our whiskers, we dismantled an old digital video camera and repurposed the frame as a body. The frame had an awkward shape which made it impossible to stand upright by itself. However after we attached the frame to a clamp and oriented the lens horizontally, it began to look like some sort of a mechanical creature with a big eye.

We decided that 'whiskers' in this context could be literal; We could have long, thin sensors sticking out underneath, to the side of the 'face' and on the top of the frame, resembling the moustache and hair of a human, the whiskers of an animal. Following that, we wired the moustache to trigger LEDs when they are pushed from the side.

A4:Whisker Evaluation

Evaluation of Andre, Gaby, and Maya's Whisker

Nissa

What I see it as: A cat that makes noise when you flick its whisker and makes other noises when you poke its eyeball with stuff.

What I imagine it becoming: A mouth that nibbles at stuff, delighting everyone nearby with its musical mastication; though, how whisker-like is that really?

Andre, Gaby, and Maya’s sound-making whisker has changed a lot since A2. It is now much more compact, which makes it much more portable. However, I think it has less presence before. There was also something a bit charming about its rawness in the first iteration. Now, I think it’s in an uncomfortable place between raw and finished, but it is a work in progress. The whisker now has a face and is recognizable as a creature head. I think that it was interesting that the group chose to make their whisker into something recognizable. The laser cut pieces look very nice aside from a few rough edges. I think it is interesting how adding the face has changed the interaction. People are less likely to poke at the gears through the eye sockets to make different noises, but the creature is sensitive to physical output and reacts in a way a real creature might.  

 

Chinwei
The new compact form factor and portability is the most obvious change in this iteration. The next obvious change is that this whisker is starting to resemble the eyes of a face, with the nose being the primary sensing organ and the eyes being the primary feedback. Aside from the fact that this it is now less convenient to stick something into the moving gears, there is a resistance to wanting to stick something into the "whisker's" eyes, as if someone could potentially hurt it by doing that.

Somewhat lacking in this current iteration of whiskers is a proper platform for it to elevate itself to a certain height to more convincingly appear like a face. In its current state, the entire mechanism is too low on the ground to be accessible to humans touching it. Also, the sensors (the nose) is a bit small considering it is acting as a touch sensor for the rest of the face.

Despite that however, once the mode of interaction becomes clear, feeding the gears with various materials and playing with the 'nose' to produce a sound is both exploratory and experiential.