Lina's Vision

Objectives

The project was exploring two concepts: (1) how can we manipulate objects without replicating a hand and (2) creating something that hinders its own purpose. With chopstick-like prongs the robot would be given pieces of clay by an audience to construct a nest/wall around itself. This wall would eventually prevent it from further receiving more clay. When the audience isn’t close the robot it appears inoffensive, two pieces of wood floating above the floor.

Outcomes

We had a long sketching and designing process that led to a short construction period. Due to this we settled on a quick open beam structure in order to focus on the chopsticks and their movement. This led to a robot that was rugged appearance of the robot which went well with it’s ultimate personality. The placing of the camera sensor meant that in order to interact with the robot you had to get close to it and have a personal interaction with it. Then as the audience approaches it, quick, smooth and stealthy movements turn it into something menacing. When the chopsticks moved it felt like it could attack you. It was untamed, constructed wild.

Implementation

The most noticeable design choice was how our robot hung from the roof. While there was no concrete design choice for this, besides being aesthetically pleasing, it ended up enhancing the personality of our robot. The robot was was floating above the audience as a bird would. For the programming of the robot I used the CNC Shield with a server written by Garth Zeglin and added my own code to it using OpenCV. The chopsticks were wooden due to my desire to make them out of a rudimentary and unpolished material. This lent to the robot's initial inoffensive quality.