Our Work
This time, Amber and I became partners. We firstly divided the work into two parts: circuit and cardboard. I began to build up the circuit while I was so confused with the super complicated instructions. In order not to make a mistake, I had to use completely the same color and plug in the wires one by one. However, after I uploaded the code, the serial motor began to count while the motor stayed silent. Sadly, I checked the whole circuit again, and then professor Minsky double checked it, finding nothing wrong. Following the professor’s instructions, I replugged the input and output, and finally the real problem came out: one of the grounds on my Arduino Uno was unable to work. (I will remember this port and never use it again for sure.)
Meanwhile, the cardboard was delicately cut by Amber, so we composed these boards with the motor to see if they could work smoothly. Unfortunately, it turned out that we left too limited room for the board to move so we had to squeeze it to make it thinner. After checking its moving ability, we thought about what decoration could we apply to it. Suddenly the cute colorful parrot gif came to my mind because both of them were turning around.
I drew a red version, and now we have the final work!
In order to make it move faster so that it would look more like the meme, we change the delay into 50.
The Artist’s Work
I love the last artwork, Autotelematic Spider Bots. It looks like it’s in the style of cyberpunk, and the huge and complicated structure makes it really cool. The interaction part happens inside of the structure itself, in that way what the audience can do is just observing them. This point is similar to the work we made. It’s interesting to watch it move in the designed way, but we can hardly do anything to interfere with it. The differences are also distinct. Infrared eyes are used in this work, so that it can “communicate” with the outside environment. Also, the discussion of the relationship between mechanism and humans is really impressive.
I can hardly tell what actuators it used, but I guess there are servo motors or step motors to make it move and scan, helping it to be more “lively”.
Our Midterm Idea
- Servo motor *4
- Light sensor
- Buzzer
- Button
- LEDs
- Different kinds of paper and cardboard
- Arduino UNO/Breadboard/Wires/Resistors/…
The interactions that the audience can do are lifting the roof and pressing the button. Lifting the roof is to control the amount of light so that the little man can tell morning from night, and pressing the button is to tell the little man: it’s time for dance!
Firstly, there will be a motor controlling the switch of the background. Also, we will add pins to the joints of the little man, and then attach the pins to the servo motors so that it can move its arms through a mechanical way. I think it will be more interesting to see the background and joints’ movements in real life than just use animation to realize the position changes: the clumsy actions of the whole thing is exactly the special part.