F I N A L
SINGLE WHITE ANDROID
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
My final for Intro to Physical Computing was a life-sized robot called Single White Android (SWA), created in collaboration with Jason Krugman and Scott Hoffer. He (it is male because the face is male, not because of any gender defining characteristics or attributes) was an exercise in creating an interactive object of no particular use except to elicit a confusing emotional reaction from the viewer. The interaction is very simple. Touch SWA’s glowing stomach, and you trigger a chain reaction of “happiness” — the video face smiles, the body brightens to full wattage, and the motorized arm reaches for you when you release your hand from the stomach as if to say, “come back.”
CONCEPT
My thinking behind the project was to play with a few different ideas in a humorous and engaging context. After a lot of back and forth about what to make, we finally settled on the SWA because of a series of discussions about loneliness in the digital age. The human condition of loneliness of course stretches far beyond the digital age, but seems exacerbated by it because our attempts at communication through current mediums is more isolating than not in terms of the physical experience. Skyping on a computer to a distant friend is never as rewarding as visiting them, and really, is virtual anything as good as the real thing? I concede that I prefer physically removed engagements like text messaging or emailing when I would prefer not to see someone, but that’s another situation entirely. From this point of loneliness, we also became fascinated with people who prefer the company of inanimate objects to other people (see the Guys and Dolls documentary at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3710987618964917848). This all led to our idea of creating a robot whose own “emotional state” depended on the presence of a person.
MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION
SWA is made entirely from, wood (the skeleton), styrofoam, bubble wrap, newspaper, rice paper (for a skin-like, blood vessely effect), Saran Wrap (a lot), 3 strings of white Christmas lights for the body, a plastic dome for the belly, 2 red incandescent light bulbs for inside the belly, a repurposed LCD screen (face), our trusty QT 113 capacitance sensor, 2 servo-motors, 2 dimmer switches attached to the servo_motors, and a 24V DC motor (for the moving arm).
Constructing the entire project took quite some time, but the circuitry, as expected, took the longest. Jason put together a nice diagram of our convoluted circuit: http://jasonkrugman.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/circuitrydiagram.jpg
The motor and electrical issues surrounding it were beyond the scope of our knowhow, but with many thanks to the significant help we received from various sources (shoutout to Greg), it all worked somehow.
In its final state, the QProx sensor triggered everything. The default state of SWA was a pulsing red stomach, dim lights throughout the body, a static body, and a video face run through Processing that looped a segment of a movie clip with a sad face (thanks Scott). When a touch was registered on the stomach (thanks copper mesh), the servos dimmed up the Christmas lights in the body, the Processing code jumped to the happy segment of the video and looped that instead, and when the touch and release was registered, the DC motor in the arm was triggered to high until the potentiometer attached to it reached a certain reading.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The most fun part about this poject was watching people very clearly understand the interaction with this object. I have always tried to create work that speaks very immediately to people, and while I haven’t always suceeded, I feel that this project was a sucess in that regard. We had the good luck to showcase SWA in the Winter Show, and it was interesting to watch people react with either abject horror or delight to SWA. With more experience, we could’ve fleshed out the interaction into something more complex and providing more narrative, but that’s for next semester.