In my last group project, we considered about the definition of interaction and made a product called ‘Watch Alpha’, which is a wearable device. We draw the conclusion that to make an interaction, there has to be a input and a output. Thus, I come up with the idea to make a wearable device, like a helmet, which can say hello to whoever went by it. It’s cute and the others cannot see the face of the person who wear it. Other people will also find it interesting to interact with it. Hellobot will definitely help to overcome the social barriers between strangers.
In our project, the helmet acted as an aid to help interactions between people: The one who is wearing the helmet and the audience who is interacting with the helmet. When the user put on the helmet, the two LEDs which are positioned on the cheeks of the ‘face’ will be lit up to give the response of wearing the helmet. In this case, I used an IR sensor inside to detect whether the head is in the helmet. When the audience come close to the Hellobot, the two ears, which are driven by two servos, will begin to wave, and the take-copter on the top of the helmet will be driven by the DC motor. At the same time, the buzzer behind the helmet will make rhythm of the Nokia Tone. To realize it, I used a Ultrasonic Sensor on the face of Hellobot. We have combined lots of ideas together. First, the Lighten up LED is the idea from Iron Man: When the mask of the suit get down, light of the eyes lighted up. Second, our helmet looks like a box: the inspiration is from the game ‘Minecraft’ and other pixel games. Third, the Take-copter is from the cartoon ‘Doraemon’. Take-copter is a tool that help Nobi and Doraemon to fly. Last, the Nokia tone is to remind people of the boot animation that the Nokia phone has, which means the communication between people. By the way, the Ultrasonic sensor at the position of nose made it looks like a pig!
In our Version 1, we made a helmet made of the cardboard box. When the user wear that, the LED will be lit up and the motor will be spinning. I had some trouble when I connected the servo: the servo did not work. After I asked the fellow, I found that I have connected the motor directly to the pin 11. As a result, the Arduino cannot provide enough power for both servo and the motor. Thus, in the user test(Version 2), I took the motor off and replaced it with a servo. With the IR sensor on the face and a hand attached on the servo, the function is that if you put your hand before the device, the small hand will wave and the LED lit up. However, during the user test, we found some problems. First, the person who wear the helmet cannot see things outside. Second, due to the function of the IR sensor, the distance of the interactor must be very short. Third, since we used the cardboard box, the device is ugly. To deal with this, I used laser cut to make a new box with eyes on the face so that the user can see things from inside. Moreover, it looks better, too. I also 3D Print Pig’s ears to make it cuter. During the final version process, I used the circuit of the transistor to control the motor and used a new Ultrasonic sensor to replace the IR sensor. The IR sensor is used as the detector. Everything goes right except the motor. To drive the heavy take-copter, I used a external battery pack to support the motor. However, the signal problem happened. First, when I attached the servo into the circuit, the signal of the Ultrasonic sensor will go wrong from time to time. With the help of the professor, I solved it by take some delays in the code. Second, when I attached the motor, the signal went completely wrong. After I used the multimeter to detect the voltage, I found that it is because of the big circuit of the motor interfere with the signal. With the help of Rudi, I made motor spin from time to time, and since the motor spins really fast and it will keep spinning even when digitalWrite low, so it will look like it is spinning all the time.
In conclusion, we want to use this device HelloBot to closer the distance between strangers and through the interaction, we want people to have more communication with each other and find the device interesting to interact with. Gladly, I found that the audience liked to interact with this device. If I have more time, I will make the appearance of the HelloBot better and make it response quicker.