In this video you can see I’ve revised the head movement for my final project to track the user better than previously by having one-hundred different angles the head can move in. Initially when I mapped the head to the accelerometer it was too jumpy and looked odd. To avoid the jumping action I added smoothing to my input values from this tutorial. Smoothing essentially places a specified amount of input variables in an array to average out the value. My array takes in the latest 60 values and averages them to provide an output to a servo motor.

To the left you can see my initial start on my Physical Computing final. In this video you’ll see that I’ve hooked an action figures head to a servo that looks at you based on how you tilt the accelerometer. I thought this would be easy, but when I mapped the accelerometer to the servo (with a 1-to-1 relationship) the head jittered a lot and didn’t move properly. I found out the accelerometer is very hard to keep static and that it is very sensitive to any movement. To iron out the movement I ended up creating three thresholds where the head is either looking left, centered, or right. Perhaps I’ll add two more in-between states to make it look more natural, but I am worried the accelerometer will be too sensitive to allow it to accurately read five distinguishable states.

The accelerometer will eventually be part of a toy box and allow the user to interact with the toy based on movement and speech. Before getting to speech I plan to connect the two arms to individual servos.

For my final project in Physical Computing I plan to make an art piece that demonstrates the human condition through a toy action figure. As a viewer walks by an action figure isle in a toy store they will hear the faint noise of a toy screaming “Help! I’m alive. Please get me out of here” while it pounds on the plastic of its case that it is enclosed in. As the viewer approaches the toy, picks it up, and speaks to it – the toy will respond and move differently. The idea of this art piece is to demonstrate how – as a human race – we are all stuck in our individual bodies, our individual perspectives, and have no way of getting out besides death. Death is a shared destination we all share and are constantly moving towards. It also demonstrates the lack of control and power we have our surroundings and the need to seek something beyond our grasp.

I’ve been meaning to create a piece to convey this idea for the past three months, but never could figure out the best way to illustrate the human condition in a concise, understandable, and emotional charged manner. When we were asked to think of our final project it hit me that an action figure could be the perfect vessel for my idea. Not only is the action figure a representation of a human and thus can be personified very easily, but it also is a device that children are interacting with less and less as the iPad and similar tech-advanced toys become more popular. Perhaps toys can be just as incredible as a touchscreen? Perhaps a toy can teach you more about life just through a conversation…

I plan to build the toy using a purchased action figure, several servo motors to move it’s head and arms, an accelerometer to read the motion on the toy box, a speaker and microphone for audio input and output, and a motion sensor to initiate the toys interaction.