Year 2 Studio Blog @eugene-bautista-creativetech2 - Tumblr Blog

Year 3, 2014 Updates

Just wanted to update the people who actually check this blog. I have a new blog for my year 3 work in uni.

This is the link: http://eugene-bautista-creativetech3.tumblr.com/.

For the first half of the 2014 year this is what I plan on doing in relation to blogs, my website and brand:

Priority:

Website Remake - Remake the website and make it look more professional and actually spend more time doing it. Will also include all relevant links and images to my work and further develop it in preparation for the future and for my "brand".

Create a Logo for my brand as well as update all social media pages to make them more professional and coherent.

Create posts in the new website and add some documentation and updates on current projects.

Small Things

Create a new page on the website for year 3 blog.

Update "old" (current) website with the above things as they are completed whilst working on the new website.

Take a relevant profile photo and put it up on "about me" page on website and maybe on other social media accounts.

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This will probably be my last post on this current blog. Any and all future updates about projects and my current work will be at this link: http://eugene-bautista-creativetech3.tumblr.com/

#Update #2014

Hello Robot! Short Film.

#hello robot #video

Final Installation set up and filming.

#hello robot #pictures

Last Week

In this last week of studio, we are supposed to be setting up and finalizing things for assessment. The week started off by finalizing the installation set up by borrowing a short throw projector from the art and design building as well as getting some lights and 2 plinths from Kim. We also acquired ourselves another half a wall, and we put a tape in between and painted it white, to make it look like its flat.

We followed the suggestions given to us by the tutors last week and we made amendments to our installation. The problem we currently have in this last week is that our robots, as a whole doesn't work. Individually each robot works on their own, which reflects how everyone in their respective roles did their job. However when we tried to combine the codes and the arduino and circuits with each of the robots (e.g. egg + tube or tube + walker) nothing works. Seeing as this is the final week, and with the suggestions from the tutors that our installations looks like a “movie-set” I suggested we make a video which shows each component of the robot working in the different circumstances. The idea with the video is, we want to show, what our robot is supposed to do and give context to our audience of the setting for our robot and the circumstances that trigger its capabilities.

Basically the video sort of creates an illusion that everything works together (individually they do, but not together). When the robots are angry, red light is scene to reflect that emotional state of anger. Green highlights neutrality and calmness, whilst blue light reflects the robots emotion of sadness/scared. The scene is set in a post apocalyptic time in the future, where human are extinct.

Definitely failure in putting together all the components of the robot lies with each of ourselves as a group, however, we do still want to show the tutors and audience, our goal, and what the robot's should and could do, provided had everything worked together and I believe we could have done so, with a little bit more organization and time. Basically at this point, our installation has become somewhat of an animatronic.

As for the actual installation, I don't think it is possible to actually be able to do anything (interact) with our robots as we found it could be quite dangerous to leave the power supply turned on. I hope that although we may not have completed the brief to the utmost fullest, we did in fact create this robot within the boundaries of the brief, and with the brief in mind. Failure of an actual interacting and working robot falls within our skill as a group to organize ourselves better and our lack of knowledge in the field.

#hello robot

Various versions of testing for our initial setup of our installation space. We manged to get these "ragged" coffee bag clothes from a third year BCT classmate, and we also got some "hay" looking thing and feathers from Look Sharp. The end is almost near, after a semester of working on this robot.

#hello robot #pictures

Spray Paint and Initial Setup

The first half of this week was dedicated on re-fabricating and painting the egg base and tube. Once that was all done and finished, the rest of us (myself, Tony, Kate and Tim) moved on to doing other things that was required to be done whilst the rest, MC and Gareth continued working on their individual roles. Apparently the “electronic junk” we collected sometime this week that we wanted to use to setup the environment for our installation was in fact seen as “junk”/ “trash” therefore we decided to paint them all a single colour to give them less of an appearance of “trash” and more of as something part of an installation.

I believe the color that we wanted to paint the trash was to give it a “rusting” look however, I think we used the wrong spray paint color and now it ends up looking gold. We spray painted the trash up in spray paint room in the 3-D lab building. I don't often visit the 3-D labs myself so it was a whole new experience working there and getting to use the spray paint room and spray painting in general. I was able to try out and learn some new things this week so I was pretty happy with that.

Once the spray painting was done, we decided to setup a “nest” formation in our installation space and gathered some feedback from some tutors of our “initial/prototype setup”. Basically this is an outline of improvements to our initial setup:

Painting the trash gold was a bad idea, why gold?

We should have a mat, or a raised platform, so long a the installation is not on the studio “ground”

Our installation and context for making our robot is reminiscent of a movie set, therefore it is a better idea o have walls to separate our installation from the rest (of the studio).

We should have spotlights and lights to give the installation a more “movie-set” theme.

The nest we created was too “neat” and “man-made” so we need to make it look messier – as if it were created by our “walker” robot.

We could use a projector to display a background image to give the setting and create context better for the audience.

Use a plinth for putting past experimentations and prototypes.

Have a short and small description of the scene and context to give the audience a better idea of what is happening and the robot's purpose.

Definitely some of the opinions are very true and will be something for us to look at in the next and final week. I feel like I have more control in the setup in this case since I was the one who talked to the tutors about their opinions and shared my own thoughts and ideas with our setup and what we want to do. Next week will be the final week and we will need to make sure the installation space is setup to the best it can be.

Initial practice set up of our installation space

As for the progress of our robot as a whole, Individually all parts, walker, tube and egg work fine and are pretty much completed (except for walker) except together, they don't function at all. So that is a big issue and problem myself, and some of the others feel that we won't have enough time to remedy.

#hello robot

Fabrication, Latex, Paint, Egg Base and Tube.

#hello robot #pictures

Almost Over

With the tube pretty much done (although the code not perfect, it does the basic of what we want), I moved on to working on fabrication on the base of the egg, and painting the tube. At this point, I have no idea on what the robots actually look like (appearance and color), so I really couldn't do much without asking Gareth, who pretty much at this point decided everything.

Working in this kind of scenario is kind of frustrating because of the fact that, I feel like, I must always ask before doing things, which is restricting and makes it feel like instead of a “group” project it has become a “follow my ideas” project. Well at this point, it's really too late to complain with how things have developed, and everything is a learning experience.

So after discussing with Gareth, the color he was previously testing and wanted would be like a bloody, red, gruesome color. With that in mind I mixed a few colors, some blacks, browns, oranges, yellows and reds, and used water color to paint the tube to give it the color it has now. In order to make it look more “realistic” the group decided we would use some varnish to make it “shinier”. Painting the tube was fairly easy and simple. I also painted the base structure for the egg that Tony and Kate fabricated using metal wire, paper mache painted over with a latex coat.

As we would put things all together finally, we realized that the base for the egg was too large, and made it difficult to make amendments to the circuitry and working on mechanics and LEDs that comes with the egg mechanic. Because of this issue we sort of panicked for a bit, but didn't really want to make a new egg base. After discussion me and Tim thought of a new idea for an egg base. What we had to do however was tear apart the old one, and recreate a new one from its components.

The idea with the new egg base is that its in two parts, that allows the person to open it up and work on the mechanics inside. This part of the project took this whole week to finish as we had to paint, repaint, re-fabricate a new egg base. All in all, I think the new design is much better and is more convenient for use.

#hello robot

Tube prototype testing, with LEDs.

#hello robot #video

More Development

Since the success of our first initial testing with the latex and balloon prototype we decided we would try testing the same thing but with using stockings as well to give it a more skin-like feel and base rather than just purely the plastic. During this time, Tim was helping the others with their parts, Kate was trying to do the code for the tubes, while I was handling all the latex-ing and fabrication of the tube. I did several other testings with the latex to try and tube to see how I can make it better.

While waiting for the latex to dry, I would help with the circuit and coding for the tube. Sometimes for some reason the wires in our circuit would be mixed up, or we would find out several of the LEDs failed to blink, so I was in charge of basically making sure that everything was supposed to be the way it is, checking on the quality of the circuit.

I tried my hand at the coding for a bit as well. The previous working code we had, was not sufficient. Although it worked, At this point we had 3 lines of 10 LEDs of different colors. 10 of each: red, blue and green. What we want with the LEDs in the tube is to light up in a sequence, one by one, depending on various circumstances. E.g. Only the red LEDs will light up in a fast sequence, one by one, when the ultrasonic sensor picks up something or someone is close by (Anger)

Here are the different circumstances we must account for while trying to program the code for the LEDs in the tube. When the lights travel in one direction (e.g. walker to egg and vice-versa, we want there to be a delay at the end, before travelling back in the opposite direction). The coding although at first may sound easy, if u look at it from this perspective it is actually quite difficult, which is why the tube took longer than the other members think it would take. Similarly no one is really accustomed working with shift-registers and trying to make sure the code works for 10 LEDs at the same time.

Angry = Red LED = Blink Fast in a Sequence 1 by 1 (1, light, turns off, next goes on, etc...)

Scared = Blue LED = Moderate Blink (not as fast as red, but not as slow as green) the blinks more than once as the sequence travels, to show “hesitation”, “doubt”, “fear”

Neutral = Green LED = Slow Blink sequence and once it reaches one direction, all turn on.

Following those “rules” it is actually difficult to do so by controlling 10 LED, so we decided to cut it down and only use 8 LED per color, per line (30 before, now only 24 LEDs are being controlled in the tube). Kim came by to help with the coding to see if he could help us. He gave us several tips and help. I tried to understand his explanations and the new code, but I was too amateur at coding. At the end of the night, Kate created a new code, that does a basic sequence of lighting the colors 1 by 1 and the color can be changed by controlling a potentiometer.

#hello robot

Tube fabrication with latex, testing, prototyping, using spray paint, sampling

#hello robot #pictures

very early prototype of our robot using a toy dog that we tore apart

#hello robot

LED line, tube circuit, pvc tube shopping.

#hello robot #picture

Progress

Over the weekend, I visited several stores inquiring about clear PVC tubes. I wanted to start on the tube as soon as possible and actually began visiting several stores for the tube problem we had. I got back to the group with pictures and afterwards bought a clear PVC tube worth $6. So, like I previously stated, we knew what we wanted but we didn't really know if it is in-fact what we want. The same thing happened to the clear PVC tube I bought, it was see through, though not as flexible and far too heavy. So in the end, the tube I bought was not used.

This week, I walked down to Modern Plastics and bought a sheet of plastic to be used for vacuum forming for the creation of the egg. In terms of the progress with the other's such as the egg and the walker I didn't really know much at this point, as I was too focused with Tim on the creation of the tube.

We decided to test out an idea of using a tube shaped balloon as a base and put latex on it, and just have a latex shaped-tube as the tube. The idea with this is that, latex is already “skin-like” with its texture, not to mention we can mold it to shape a tube, that is the idea with the balloon. Our initial attempts with using latex on the balloon failed, as the balloon just shrunk and so did the latex. Tim suggested we use clear wrap and wrap the balloon before using latex. Eventually we did that, and after popping the balloon, it was a success. The latex kept the shape of the tube-balloon, and thus we decided we would go with that.

In terms of the lights within the tube, we decided to stick with using LEDs. Our initial idea of using RGB was abandoned as it cost us around $48 for 6 pieces of RGB LED. We intended to use RGB for other parts of the robot other than the tube, and we found this to be too costly. As such we decided to stick with using LEDs, and connecting them in a line circuit, and using shift- registers to reduce the number of pins we would have to use.

The idea with this is we would use 10 LED of the same color, for a particular emotion.

Red = Angry

Blue = Sad

Green = Neutral

With this in mind we began on the actual creation of the tube and LED. This felt great as it finally feels like things are progressing.

Me and Tim, knowing what to do made quick work on the creation of the LED lines. Me and Tim soldered and hot glued the LEDs. At the same time I created the circuit for the LED by looking at and following instructions online with using shift-registers. At this point, all we had to do was make sure everything was working properly and checking individual LEDs if they have been soldered properly, and if the circuit was connected properly.

#hello robot

First Week Back

First week after holidays, was quite hectic. We knew we didn't have much time left and people just started doing work. During this week, I just helped around the others with their robots. Me, Tim and Kate, sort of left the tube thing on the side, because after we told the others about our idea and what equipment we were going to use they didn't like it, so it was basically back to scratch.

This first week, I just helped a little bit here and there. I discussed with Tony about his mechanics for the walker. Relayed information between Tony who's in the 3D lab to Kate who was doing the 3-D modelling.

There were several things that were going wrong with the mechanical side of the walker, such as the gears mis-aligning and other random things. As such Tony actually bought a toy dog, took it a part to see if we could simply use the mechanics of an already finished and working, moving toy robot dog. All we had to do was change the aesthetics so that it would fit the image of how we want it to look like.

As the delegated “artist” of the group, I find that working in this team can be quite frustrating because no one had an “image” of how they wanted things to look like and even if they did they would find it hard to explain. This makes it difficult for me to sketch everyone's ideas and try and create a proper concept sketch with everyone's ideas combined. I provide sketches, but they are based on key “words” that I ask what people think the robot should look like, and therefore are more connected with “my ideas”. As such, the sketches I make a made redundant and suddenly there are new designs and concepts that would just pop up and be used without a full group consultation. This is quite frustrating.

So, with pretty much my “artist” role made redundant, Me and Tim were still thinking of way to work on the tube but pretty much this week, nothing in terms of the tube was done, and I felt pretty much useless.

#hello robot

Researching Materials and Holidays

Over the two week, mid semester break the group decided to split the workload of the robot in three parts: the egg, the tube (chord), and the walker. Gareth wanted to work on the egg by himself, whilst Tony being the more mechanical and technical guy wanted to work on the mechanics on the walker together with MC. The tube was left for myself, Tim and Kate because everyone thought the tube to be the easiest part and we could finish fast and move on to help with the rest.

Over the holidays, the three of us were researching and thinking of ways on creating the tube. The first problem we encountered is that, it seems that everyone in the group has a different idea on how the tube will look like. Some wanted lights inside the tube, some wanted lights, outside the tube, and some didn't want lights. My honest choice, is that I didn't really care and just wanted everyone to agree on one thing and stick with it. This is an example that reflects our group dynamics in that, we are too indecisive or rather we aren't really great with sticking to one idea because everyone has their own individual ideas that they would rather follow or try and make others follow.

The reason why the tube was delegated to the three of us, is as I said before, it felt like it was the least important and easiest of the three to do. It's true that the tube is not the main feature of our robotics however, it's part cannot be left out and in my opinion plays a key role presenting our goal and idea to the audience.

As for researching on the creation of the tube, since we wanted lights, we were thinking of several ways in which we could go about setting it up the easiest way. Kate suggested using LED tape. Having experience with LED tape, the problem with it is that its not programmable and we wanted our lights to be programmed to go with a particular sensor (not sure what sensor atm). So that wasn't really a good idea. We thought about using individual LEDs but we weren't sure of the idea yet, as they would cost quite a lot of money, and although we visited Surplustronics, we didn't want to purchase anything that would end up not being used.

Particularly what I was most worried about for the tube, is the actual “tube”. I know we want it to be see through, and be flexible at the same time. We know what we want, but at the same time, we don't know how well it will work or if it is how we think it is. We research several things like “clear pvc pipe”, “clear air duct tube” etc... We visited Look Sharp to see if we could use anything, and we found a plastic siphon pump, which was a good way to start and create a prototype with. With only half a semester left, and not much progress done in the actual creation of our robot I think it was about time we began working really hard.

#hello robot

Lego Prototype and Progress

This week, the group managed to create a lego prototype of the moving robot's mechanism. There were two different iterations of the mechanics, one designed by Tony and the other by MC. I'm glad that we managed to at least have a mechanical prototype of the robot's movement. Using the lego NEXT allows us to create a tangible working prototype of the mechanics rather than looking at it virtually on CAD. The drawbacks of using the Lego NEXT is that all the parts may not be useable for us.

What's left for us to do at this point is to decide on the finalized mechanic and start working on the actual robot. At the same time this week, Gareth's been working on the coding a little bit on the mic that he had bought from Hong Kong for this project. It was a fairly simple setup on the arduino, similarly with the code. The mic looked quite promising and was working as was intended with the program. We also bought some plastic that will be vacuumed and shaped into the eggs outer shell.

#Hello Robot #Studio 4

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