Reference: Feeltact Device
Small vibrating Motor:
Month: September 2018
Semester Final Project Pitch: HOODUP [Clarita & Ling Ern]
Micro Project 4: Pirate Broadcasting II
For micro project 4, I approach it in 2 ways:
1) Impromptu live interview @7am in the morning:
I have been taking the NTU shuttle bus for the past 3 semesters and I am quite curious about how other students/passengers think about the service so I decided to do a very short impromptu interview. In this video, I interviewed my lecturer for one of my modules this semester as well as the in charge (headcounter) for the shuttle service at the Marine Parade bus stop! As it is still quite early in the morning, it is hard to get my friends to come online promptly when my live streaming starts so I did not prepare that many audience/viewers. For the friends, I asked, quite a number of them couldn’t wake up in time. The bus will leave about 7.10am so I reached slightly earlier today and pre-empt my lecturer that I am doing a 3 min live broadcast and she was agreeable to be a participant in my broadcast. After the broadcast, I also asked if the Malay lady was okay with me posting this up for my project, I was quite glad that she agreed quite readily!
Here are some other comments left by my friends:
2) Nature- an expansion of my first video about birds:
On the topic of nature, I like the sense of continuity from the bird video in micro project 1 so I decided to find something similar to expand on! In the morning as part of my route from home to the shuttle bus stop, I will have to walk past this mini “Bird Park”. In a way, it is part of my daily routine hence this part of nature feels rather close to heart.
Here are some closer shots of them:
some other comments left by my friends:
This is actually the 2nd attempt of the video. The first attempt was at 6.45am in the morning with the mist but it is actually quite hard to video the birds so I went ahead to conduct my interview at the bus stop before heading back for a 2nd attempt on the way home.
Overall, micro project 4 is still quite interesting because I conducted my first live interview and I tried to engage people from the 1st space (physical space) as well as reacting to audience from the third space (replying in speech with live comments coming in)!
Micro Project 3: Pirate Broadcasting-Food Recommendations at Bedok Hawker Centre
Before Micro Project 3, I have never done any live videos or broadcasting, so it was a new experience for me. I attempted several live videos, including 2 of them at the neighbourhood community garden with Instagram live before attempting another 2 live videos at the Bedok Hawker Centres with Facebook Live. When I was trying out the features at the community garden, I didn’t know how to screen record with sound on my phone (forgot to enable mic) and was left with the videos muted. Hence after figuring out the issue, I decided to do a more impromptu broadcast about food recommendations at the hawker centre because I am a foodie and this is something I genuinely want to share with my viewers. The whole experience was really fun and as I was recommending the stalls in my videos, quite a few people sitting around who heard me along the way were staring at me with a questionable look. Nonetheless, I begin to find myself liking live broadcasting because of the spontaneity and that the content is really raw and unfiltered.
PARO, the”CAREBOT”
PARO, the”CAREBOT”:
What is it about?
Paro, the therapeutic seal marketed as a “carebot,” was designed specifically for the elderly, especially for those with dementia. It is an advanced interactive robot developed by AIST, a leading Japanese industrial automation pioneer. Paro is a socially responsive robot that reacts to the individual in response to the way in which it is treated as they follow social behaviour and rules. It weighs approximately 6 pounds (2.73kg) much alike to a baby seal.
Why was it created?
Animal-assisted therapy is perhaps the best-known form of recreational therapy in the aged care setting. Studies suggest that animal-assisted therapy reduces depressive symptoms and agitation and results in an overall positive experience for the elderly. As a result, robots, and particularly pet robots, have arisen as a viable alternative.
How does it work?
A baby harp seal spends most of the day sleeping. However, PARO has a diurnal rhythm of morning, daytime, and night. For example, PARO is active during the daytime, but gets sleepy at night.
PARO has five kinds of sensors: tactile, light, audition, temperature, and posture sensors, with which it can perceive people and its environment. With the light sensor, PARO can recognize light and dark. He feels being stroked and beaten by tactile sensor or being held by the posture sensor. PARO can also recognize the direction of voice and words such as its name, greetings, and praise with its audio sensor.
PARO can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers, and to respond to its new name. For example, if you stroke it every time you touch it, PARO will remember your previous action and try to repeat that action to be stroked. If you hit it, PARO remembers its previous action and tries not to do that action. By interaction with people, PARO responds as if it is alive, moving its head and legs, making sounds, and showing your preferred behaviour, imitating the voice of a real baby harp seal.
PROs:
#1) It allows the documented benefits of animal therapy to be administered to patients in environments such as hospitals and extended care facilities where live animals present treatment or logistical difficulties. There is no need to feed, walk or clean up after the robot and it doesn’t come with the risk of biting or unpredictable behaviour.
#2) PARO has been shown to have a psychological effect on patients, improving their relaxation and motivation and hence reduce patient stress between them and their caregivers. The emotional benefits extended to providing happiness and comfort at the end of life. This is especially significant for elderly who had been exhibiting disruptive, loud behaviour. They became more relaxed, contented, and settled for a period of time.
#3) Reduced loneliness has been identified as a benefit of Paro with the establishment of a direct relationship with the robotic seal and its use in facilitating better social connections with others. Isolated and withdrawn residents talked to Paro in a conversational manner and elderly reaching the end-of-life stage verbalised their internal world, seemingly reducing a sense of being alone.
CONS:
#1) While robotic pets can offer a novelty in the beginning, over time, the spontaneity goes away. That’s because the owner has to engage the robot to respond versus a live animal who can innately and intuitively read a person’s emotions and give him or her a lick on the hand or set its head on a lap. This may not be useful for completely immobile elderly.
#2) They “learn” in very limited ways, according to pre-designed algorithms. They respond in pre-programmed ways, with little room for on-the-fly decision making.
#3) The battery runs out quickly and has to be recharged often through the seal’s pacificer. There was a suggestion that some residents with dementia appeared to lack the understanding that it was not real and truly believed that a live seal has come to live with them. Some felt that this can be an ethical implication where Paro can be emotionally deceiving.
Similar adaptations in Singapore:
Meet HUGGLER from Singapore:
This stuffed monkey can laugh, grunt and whine depending on where it’s touched, and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) researchers hope to use it as an alternative to pet therapy to improve quality of life for the elderly. The idea is to offer a tactile companion for elderly patients, while monitoring for risks of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Developed in Singapore, the Huggler is currently on trial at the St Luke’s Eldercare Hospital, in the north of the island. Huggler can engage the elderly where traditional stimulation can’t, and alert caregivers to moods in an unobtrusive way. The robot tracks how people are interacting with it, picking up on both physical actions (how hard a person squeezes, say) and the noises they make. This data is then fed into a “sound-event classification” system that assesses the hugger’s state of mind. The use of HuGGler will also provide clinicians with reports related to the interaction behavior pattern of the users performed towards the robotic platform.
“The current method of monitoring the mental well-being of elderly is based on manual observation and questionnaires that are very subjective,” wrote Tan Yeow Yee, one of the developers, in an email. “We can use Huggler to monitor and provide the information to geriatrician to allow them to make more accurate deduction.”
Evaluation:
Personally, I find this a very useful interactive device that can act as an alternative companion for the elderly especially for those who are suffering from dementia. In Singapore’s context where we face a rapidly aging population, this device may come in particularly useful.
Like the Huggler, perhaps Paro can be improved with added on abilities such as:
- Heart rate monitor to be activated when the elderly is hugging Paro (or Huggler) and data to be sent to caregivers.
- Beeping alert system for caregivers as reminders for the elderly to take their medication at regular intervals.
The interactive device can also be modified to fit other age groups such as for young children. It can be paired with a mobile application where data about the interaction can be collected and sent via the application for parents to monitor their children’s behaviour and better understand them.
References:
Research Article: Robotic Seals as Therapeutic Tools in an Aged Care Facility: A Qualitative Study By Melanie Birks, Marie Bodak, Joanna Barlas, June Harwood, and Mary Pether
Research Article: The ethical implications of using PARO with a focus on dementia patient care https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ec2e/5cc752693539c640347450882509e1d32653.pdf
https://youtu.be/oJq5PQZHU-I (PARO ROBOT URL)
http://www.huggler-pet.com/about/
https://nurse.org/articles/nurse-robots-friend-or-foe/
https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2017/june/can-robots-help-care-for-people-with-dementia
https://www.psd.gov.sg/challenge/ideas/deep-dive/living-and-working-alongside-robot-buddies
http://www.parorobots.com/photogallery.asp
https://www.nextavenue.org/robotic-pets-good-real-pets/
http://www.kalw.org/post/robotic-seals-comfort-dementia-patients-raise-ethical-concerns#stream/0
Research Critique: Good Morning Mr Orwell
“Good morning Mr. Orwell” is a piece which uses the satellite technology to create interactive performances, linking different stages in different parts of the world. Combination of broadcast footage of live programs in New York and Paris involves video interventions using the Paik-Video Synthesizer which allowed the artist to alter and manipulate existing video images.
(watch 6:30 , 39:00 , 51:20)
Paik-Video Synthesizer
This program was done to demonstrate the benign and positive effects of technology on our lives as opposed to George Orwell’s dystopian view of technological advances on the future society as described in his novel 1984 where television is seen as a negative medium, useful for dictators or politicians for one-way communication.
The 1 hr long cross-country broadcast on New Year’s Day symbolises how television can cross borders and provide liberating information-communication service. It also showcases the spontaneity and immediacy of live social broadcasting with the intersection of experimental art where the hitches, glitches, delays, and improvisations (inevitable technical difficulties) play a part in the live broadcasting.
Merce Cunningham dance:
Delayed footage of the dance was underlaid, creating an illusion of him dancing with himself in two ‘time frames’ in real time.
Charlotte Moorman playing the TV cello:
The re-enactment of TV Cello by Charlotte Moorman also distorts space when we see the host George Plimpton appearing in both our television screens and in the TV Cello at the same time, forming a new composite image.
Idea of a third space?
The idea of a third space is formed where different performance segments with asynchronous elements are put together and displayed as an output. Back then in 1984, it allowed people all over the world to see satellite broadcast as more than just a tool to disseminate live/important news, it became a medium for collaborative artwork to take place.
The collective narrative presented will be heavily dependent on the responses of both the participants in the first space (host, artists, and musicians, dancers etc) and third space (live stream viewers). The constantly changing aesthetic can potentially change viewers’ perceptions of a normal television and begin to view it as an artistic medium. More importantly, he showed that we can overcome time difference and spatial limitations with technology.
References:
https://www.theartstory.org/artist-paik-nam-june- artworks.htm
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/goog-morning/
https://www.eai.org/titles/good-morning-mr-orwell.html
http://nightflight.com/revisiting-good-morning-mr-orwell-nam-june-paiks-rebuttal-to-orwells-dystopian-vision-on-the-first-day-of-1984/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/paik-abe-synthesizer/
https://www.n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/tv/paik_abe_synthesizer.html (Read this to know how the synthesizer works)
Radio functions and altered modalities in a Smart Kitchen [ Jin Yee, Ling Ern and Vennessa]
Smart Kitchen:
This week’s exercise on sketch-appbodyspace will be on adapting radio layouts and having an altered modality on objects.
#Radio Device 1: KITCHEN HOOD
The kitchen hood will act as the speaker for the radio.
#Radio Device 2: SOUP LADLE
The speed of your stirring will determine the speed of the music played in the kitchen.
#Radio Device 3: FRYING SPATULA
The impact / force on the frying pan from the spatula will determine the volume. How hard you fry determine the volume of the radio from the kitchen hood (speaker).
#Radio Device 4: POT
With every new ingredient added into the pot, a new song will be added to the playlist.
#Altered Modality: CUTTING BOARD
There will be a light stip on the top of the cutting board, it will light up when any cutting motion is detected. When it senses that there is a safe distance from the knife to the fingers, the strip will be green. As the knife gets closer to your fingers, it will gradually turn to amber and then to red (danger zone).
A beeping sound function will also be activated. When the light turns amber, there will be a light beeping sound. As it gradually turns to red, the beeping sounds get louder and louder much like a car reversing detection system.
LED Human Traffic Project [Bridgel, Clarita, Ling Ern, Viena]
HUMAN TRAFFIC LED Project:
This project is made for ilight event participants where they can attach a LED strip on their bags to indicate the direction they are moving towards. There will be 2 contact points for right and left respectively. When the user touches the right contact point, the LED will light up in green signaling right and vice versa for the left contact point (very much alike to car signals). When both contact points are touched, the LED turns red to signal the stopping motion of the participant.
This project can also be implemented in other scenarios such as: Teachers bringing young students out for learning journeys or tour guides conducting tours. The teacher or the tour guide can also place this LED strip on their bags or flag (sometimes board) to signal the direction they are moving towards without shouting all the time.
PROCESS:
Initially we tried to experiment the capacitive touch with aluminum foil via led bulb first using <CapacitiveSensor.h>.
Then, we moved on to using 2 LED bulbs to simulate the left and right capacitive sensors.
After which, the code was modified to accommodate the LED strip and each contact point is made to light up the led strips in either direction with <FastLED.h>.
The led strip is supposed to light up in red (to represent the stopping motion of the user) when both contact points are touched. However, in this case, there is a glitch whereby the green colour is still lighted up followed by the red.
Hence, we did some adjustments and the corrections seem to rectify the errors!
This is our code:
For ease of usage, we extended the resistor touch points using wires and aluminium foil.
We also made “control sticks” to make it more user-friendly.
