Animal Interaction

Details

So, we are four guys recently graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. We wanted to do something cool togheter instead of searching for jobs, so we started Drap og Design. (www.drapogdesign.com) And as a kickoff we wanted to make something cool. And when we saw this competition we thought we should at least contribute and deliver what we have at the moment. Underneath is a picture of our small beautiful house we work from and below that again is our story and process.

We started this project playing with the idea of how fun it could be to experience and interact like animals. The wast array of animals that inhabit this planet interpret and interact with the world in other ways then humans do. Some examples are obvious, like how the bat uses sonar to navigate or how the elephant can feel and interpret vibration from afar. Other are more mysterious like some shrimp that can see the full color spectrum or like the Platypus that uses its beak to "see" the electronic signals other animals use to control their limbs.

So we set to make something that gave kids or other users the ability to experience the way animals see, feel and otherwise interact with the world

Many animals got cool "powers" but few of these can be translated directly to humans. We are not be able to use a sonar the way the bat does and we can't see all the colors the shrimp does, it is physically impossible for our eyes to see more then the colors we already do.

Our goal was not to replicate the powers of the animals as exact as we could. We wanted to give the users the idea and the concept of the interaction animals have. We would abstract interactions and change input and output based on how we best could interpret powers from the animals and give it to the users.

Mapping out the various animals and their powers is where we started, we chose exciting "powers" from various animals and set out to find out how we could translate those interactions into something we could use. We wanted this to be a complete gear that people could don to use it. Our vision was a base station, and various attachment that you put on to enable certain powers. We also developed settings and user scenarios, looking into possible usage of our gear in an educational way.

We chose one single animal and its power to use as a proof of concept and to help talk about our idea.

But we have planned out most of the other powers we want to recreate and aim to do them soon.

The following content will show our idea, our process and our proof of concept model.

Hope you enjoy.

Components

2 × RGB Color Sensor with IR filter and White LED - TCS34725 from adafruit

1 × LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Bare (5M) COM-12026 From Sparkfun

2 × Arduino Uno

1 × Painter coverall

1 × String and tape

Project Logs

Collapse

Interacket
Drap & Design • 08/21/2014 at 01:52 • 1 comment

Our finished outfit. 1.0 soon to become 2.0
Hope you like it
The Kit
Drap & Design • 08/21/2014 at 00:53 • 0 comments

Interacket exploded view
Pictures of the process
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 23:57 • 0 comments

Trying out panel sizes.
Working on how to diffuse the light from the LED-strips.
The movement of color was important to us, so this is something we worked a lot on.
Sketching continuously to map out ideas and further work.
Building the final prototype required some soldering (and short cuts).
Voilá! Version 1 of the Interacket turned out to be even more magical than we hoped for!
Inspiration
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 23:29 • 0 comments

This is a chameleon, our main source of inspiration while designing the interactions
Image from Google (Bob Mielke - http://pacificnorthwesttravelerdotcom.wordpress.com/)
Arduino Code
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 22:53 • 0 comments

Below is the code we used to make the Aninteractions jacket work. We started working with the code for the Florabrella (https://learn.adafruit.com/florabrella/code) found on the Adafruit website, and modified and removed this to make it suitable for our use. We also had to download the Adafruit libraries:
Color sensor library: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_TCS34725
Neopixel library: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide
Basically the sensors perform continuous readings and send these to the LED-strips. If the readings indicate "black" or as good as pitch dark, the LED-strips fade out. If the sensors are in mid-air or sense an "ambient" reading, the previous reading (color or off) is maintained until either a color or darkness is picked up again.
The code uses one main sketch with three function sketches. Not really necessary, but we started doing it this way to have a better overview and flexibility (bear in mind, we are designers, not programmers).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main Code:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#include <Wire.h>
#include "Adafruit_TCS34725.h"
#include <Adafruit_NeoPixel.h>
#define PINA 6
#define PINB 5
#define TPIXELA 80 //The total amount of pixel's/led's in your connected strip/stick (Default is 60)
#define TPIXELB 80 //The total amount of pixel's/led's in your connected strip/stick (Default is 60)
Read more »
Explanation of the system, the various parts/attachment/base station and input/output
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 20:37 • 0 comments

Explantion of above
Teaser
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 20:28 • 0 comments

Small teaser of upcoming gizmo
Building of the Chameleon outfit
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 20:27 • 0 comments

We started with sketching, to find out how we would utlize our tech in a way that would give the user the experience of the interaction this animal have.
What now
Drap & Design • 08/20/2014 at 20:25 • 0 comments

Next stage is to make a version two. Then make a set with more animal interaction.