No Touch Zone

Objectives

Our objective for this project was to nonverbally define personal space, drawing on proxemics and warning coloration found in animals. We created a wearable that can allow the user and those around the user to be aware of his or her personal space through the usage of light signals.The lights can alert the user of a nearby individual if they aren’t paying attention, as well as “scare off” or warn the nearby individual. We focused more on the conceptual design of defining personal space through warning lights, rather than the aesthetic appearance of the wearable.

Implementation

The infrared proximity sensors requires the sensors to be exposed in order for the infrared light to be emitted and received, required us to keep the sensors uncovered on the wearable. We also decided to limit the number of sensors we would use for the sake of quick prototyping and debugging the code, since each sensor has it’s own input and output value.

Outcomes

The sensors worked perfectly on the breadboard. We would set the sensors to calibrate, allowing it to give us accurate readings by sampling the area and dismissing ambient noise. When an object is at a given distance from the sensor, the LED would light up. We also coded it so the closer the object is to the sensor, the brighter the LED would become. Although the sensors worked very well on the breadboard, having to transfer the circuit onto a protoboard and then soldering and wiring the board to the Arduino, caused weak wire connections resulted in calibration issues and the sensors not responding to the way we wanted.