deployable robot

Final Project

DEPLOYABLE ROBOT | Series

Interactive Touching Robot Design---Final Booklet

Penndesign, Spring 2011 Interactive Prototype Design WorkInstructors: Samon Kim, Mark YimStudents: Brandon W. Smith+ Heather Culbertson+ Jonus Cleveland+ Kaicong Wu

Deployable RobotInteractive Prototype DesignBrandon Smith + Kaicong Wu + Jonus Cleveland


Final Project

This project is a machanism technology based morphology research. The topic is concentrated on morphological gender of geometries. For all the geometries in the world, beyond their own logic of geometrical properties, they do have certain rela-tionships when they are related with other different geometries. For the architectural field, there are quite a lot of examples to illustrate the transformation or merging between different types of geometries. So we want to deeper that topic and push the idea of transformation into kinetic and robot field in an interac-tive way.

Gender

The prediction is that every geometry does have certain gender of its own. For some geometries go out in a positive way we suppose them to be a male geometry which represents forces as well as strength or weight. On the other hand, for those negative spacial geometries, we belevie they are female ge-ometries which represent tender as well as smooth or thinness. Actually, it`s not a delirious thinking without any history if we go back to see how the ancient Greeks describe the Doric and Ionic Columns.

Transformation

Here, the transformation of geometries is defined as a self-

00 organized hehavior. Insteading of searching for exterior foces to push the geometries to change, all the surface elements on our robot will have their own logics of transforming. We designed them to have a sensive reaction to the input which human gives them.

So everty time a person touches the robot or even huge the robot, the surface or the skin of the robot will calculate the po-sition where is being touched and then realize whether it is a right position for the current shape gender. Whether it is right or not, the robot skin will smoothly change to a new situation which means it is either changing from female to male or on the one way. But what interests us is in this changing process, the mechanism performs its own logic and define the shape in a very bottom-up way. Althougth the two geometries which define female and male is predefined by us, the processing geom-etries will be understood as emerged by mechanim.


Hybrids Structure

In the beginning, we were researching purely on the fabrication geometries. We use cardboads and stockings to test the nego-tiating relationship between the inside system and the outside surface. So the pictures on right illustrate our basic prototype of the design.

The fabrication sruface is finally replaced by a seriously de-signed deployable structural system and the inside rigid tubes were finally played by a gear system with scrows.


Logic

So all the behavior the whole robot is not performed by outside forces but by the interanl forces from mechanism parts. As long as the mechanism parts inside keep pushing the surface, the depolyable surface will start to change continuously.




Skin

Instead of simply faking a natural female or male shape, our idea is to try to define an abstract curved geometry which only represents the basic properties or feeling of gender. So for the skin we need to do very simple research on how it is going to work. The original experiment was trying to make use of gear system to define a seriously designed contour of the whole shape and all the gear is rotating in different speed to have a good control of the smooth changing of the geometry.

Test

We started to use computer model to test the idea but suddenly we found it took forever to control all the gear system. For one thing, we need a very complicated programming process to teach every gear to have a certain skill to realize the condition of the geometry they are representing.Another thing is even if we finish this parodox, the whole system would be to heavy to drive by a basic robot platform.

Platform

Although somehow the robotic platform seems not so coher-ent with what the geometry we have designed, the paltform did push the idea from a stable into an interactive way. We made use of the platform to drive the robot to go everywhere to attract people`s attention which will really complete our idea in a very

interactive way. From this stage,we have a realistic image of our robot that we suppose it to be played in a meeting place. 01


>> The original female shape which has enough positive curve --------


>> The contours of the shape to become control lines --------


>> The control lines were translated into mechanism language --------


>> A comparision between before and after the transformation of the gear system --------



>> This is to illustrate how to make use of the shape of the gears to gemerate geometries --------




>> So finally a male shape is generated --------



Touchable

We keep push in the direction of generating geometries and de-sign an LED circuit to have the shape cooperate with the play-ers. The basic idea is choosing some parts of the shape to be set up a LED touching sensor. So everytime a person touches one part of the surface, the LED will be delighted in that zone.

Pervert Info

Also, we develop the whole system to a projecting situation. So the robot will robot will recognize which is the right position of one gender. For example, if we think the geometry has gender, then how we are going to think where is a private zoning of a certain shape. We think in such a way, it will not only think the robot in a very ethical way, but also make the whole system have some outputs. When the robot is wondering around it will project the current judging on a wall and capture the person`s face and we think that will be a very interesting way which will be the ideal condition of the robot.

02





>> At this level we deconstructed the whole shape into different small fragments --------




Predator Alert: Pervert Rating: 7.5/10

+Touched me in my chest for 10 seconds.+Touched me in my special place below my belt. It made me feel uncomfortable.

I saw this person looking at this person's rear 10 times. The longest interval being 5 seconds.

>> This is how the pervert infomation is projected --------


>> This is how LED touching system works which makethe whole thing touchable--------


>> The position of the robot in the show as well as remote controling system works --------


Skeletons

In the former test, when we were rethinking about it, there were too many uncontrolled parameters which really mesy up the project. So we redesigned the whole thing in a very pure and workable way and that is why we brought a deployable struc-tural system. So now we abandoned the fabrication skin but reinput a skeleton system to deploy. The basic logic of the de-ployable structure is due to a very simple behavior between two crossing cessors and different joints to control the whole geom-etry. It will not only becomes a skin but also maintains structural infomations in the skin.

Pole

Another new invention is a pole with screw in the middle. Af-ter we designed two different skeleton parts of the deployable structure---- one is on top for a male shape, another is below for a female shape, the lowest skeletons on the top part and the highest skeletons on the bottom part will all be connected to the screw around the pole which is also dirven by a motor. So when the motro is roating, it will drive the pole to rotate as well. As a result the srew in the middle is pushed to go up and down which performs the whole deploying.

03


>> This is an earlier study model to show how the system is going to work --------


>> Deploying process --------


>> This prototype will become the bottom female elements --------


>> Then we reverse the whole geometry to become a male shape --------



Motor Systems

>> The middle pole will be driven by a motor system --------


Camera

Input = Sensor to mesure the postion people touch

Collect your pervert informations

Project your pervert informations

Final Output


Lorex LW1020 Color Wireless Remote Surveillance System with Indoor/Outdoor Night Vision Camera

910-910 MHZ300 ft.

>>Finally a camera will stand on top of the whole thing to do capturing and projecting --------



>> Our project can only be seen as a prototyping robot. Although at last, we still can not finish the compiling work from each system, the whole robot would define a complex emerging system will not only invent geometry by itself but also define an interacitve device which could be futher developped.


Documents

deployable robot