Autonomous PIC-based blimp

Here’s a robo-blimp that some students at Colorado State University designed Here's a blimp with its own ideas of flight. maneuver in two modes. The first is remote control mode where a transmitter sends directional commands (forward, back, left and right) to the blimp and the blimp responds accordingly. The second mode lets the blimp chart its own course to a predetermined destination. In the autonomous mode, the blimp flies to an infrared (IR) beacon. IR transmitters on the blimp receive a signal from the beacon, and the transmitter facing the beacon receives the most pulses. The blimp then goes in that direction.

Beautiful Blimps

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56961858@N00/sets/72157618994181301/show/
Kids! ART CENTER FOR KIDS - June 2006 (ALAVs 1.0)
The ALAVs made another appearance for a children's robotics class taught by Syuzi Pakhchyan at Art Center.











http://www.alavs.com/ Great project from Jed and Nikhil (videos) – “We designed a working metaphor of a new ecology of things by using networked objects. This was possible through the sponsorship of Sun Microsystems who donated instrumental technology. Through a defined research process we designed objects that behave and respond in specific ways and are part of a networked system that emphasizes autonomous and flocking behavior. There are two main components: feeding and flocking. ALAVs are 3 flying objects (Bubba, Flipper, and Habib) that exist in a networked environment and communicate through assigned behaviors forming three scenarios: ALAV with a person, ALAV with other ALAVs, ALAV alone.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56961858@N00/sets/72157618994181301/show/

Simple demonstration to explore the radio waves generated by a mobile phone.

http://www.creative-science.org.uk/mobile_LED.html
by Dr Jonathan Hare, Sussex University, Department of Physics, Falmer, Brighton.











































http://www.creative-science.org.uk/mobile_LED_simple.html

Living Wall from high low tech MIT

This project experiments with interactive wallpaper that can be programmed to monitor its environment, control lighting and sound, and generally serve as a beautiful and unobtrusive way to enrich environments with computation.

Run your hand across this wallpaper to turn on a lamp, play music, or send a message to a friend. The wallpaper is flat, constructed entirely from paper and paint and can be paired with our paper computing kit whose pieces serve as sensors, lamps, network interfaces, and interactive decorations.

http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=27

Leah Buechley

Leah Buechley is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group. The High-Low Tech group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies.
beaded LED bracelets

Spring 2005-present. Each bracelet, woven on a traditinoal bead loom out of beads, conductive thread and surface mount LEDs, is a 5x10 display matrix that can be programmed with animations like cellular automata and scrolling text. I strove to make the bracelets lovely with the electricity on as well as off; the most recent versions are almost as thin and flexible as traditional beaded jewelry, controlled with surface mount electronics and soft circuitry and powered with flexible Lithium-ion batteries.

These recent bracelets, built in spring 2007, function as motion-sensing, communicating wearable displays (older versions were displays only). Each new bracelet contains an accelerometer that senses wrist movement and a Bluetooth module for wireless communication. They can interact with laptops, PDAs and cell phones as well as each other and other wearables.

WIND BOARD Spring 2007. A combined input/output device captures and displays the wind. The board also functions as a two handed input device. The state of the grid is continuously transmitted to a computer via bluetooth.

Amarino is a toolkit that connects Android-driven mobile devices with Arduino microcontrollers, making it easy to control objects in the environment with a phone.

thinking about Research Design..where to from here...

Going back to an earlier post...

Anna Dumitriu from The Centre for Research & Development Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton
http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/research/student/dumitriu/abstract-research-questions
http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/

so onto research design..how do I design this project..nailing down the aims might generate the question?
which can be my aim for next week..haha
read Marks confirmation doc, and revisit Design Research edited by Laurel.



Research Title..not the catchy one but the one that says what I'm investigating?
Practice Based Investigation into the Relationship of Normal Flora Microbiology to Philosophical Notions of the Sublime
Aims
This project will interrogate the possibilities of scientific imagery as art – its allegorical, expressive, and social character...

Research Question
Key question
How does the....
Questions arising as a result of the research:
italics from Anna Dumitriu

“Complex systems theory and evolutionary robotics for 7-11 year olds, with emergent outcomes.

Robot Sound Detectives Algorithm Dance. The project looked at how we experience the world and how particular areas of focus change our perception of experience.

Brighton and Hove City Council invited Anna Dumitriu to develop an artwork to mark “Walk To School Week” in collaboration with St Nicolas Junior School in Portslade. This year’s events had a national theme of “Sound Detectives” which in many ways focused on experience, the experience of walking to school, the senses being used, how the senses are focussed and what is noticed and what is left out. Through workshop sessions about robot sensor technology which included performance exercises the children learnt how robots are able to sense and interact with the world and change (or evolve) their behaviour appropriately. More deeply the project looked at how we experience the world and how particular areas of focus change our perception of experience. This relates strongly to ideas of mindfulness, and the notion that the sensation of consciousness may be the compound result of our senses acting together in the world. The project took many ideas from the evolutionary robotics discipline and in particular Francisco Varela’s work on The Embodied Mind. Children participated in performance exercises designed to her them experience the world (and their journey to school) in a new mindful way, sensing their environment and experiences through their interactions with it and building on those sensations to create a a more powerful sense of awareness.

http://web.mac.com/annadumitriu/AD/Algorithm_March.html