Assignment: Final Project 1: Progress Report

Collaborators:

Assignment: Final Project 1: Progress Report
Collaborators: Michael Manoochehri, Laura Paajanen, ashley

"Bubblespace"

Tangible User Interface:

We have decided to continue working with our virtual bubble wand as a Tangible User Interface, while continuing to brainstorm ideas on how to use virtual bubbles, (or perhaps some other kind of visual output) for person to person communication.

To summarize, the bubble wand will have two kinds of physical sensors. One is a sensor to detect the air that the user is blowing through the wand, while the other is a sensor that tracks movement of the wand.

Hardware:

Ashley has met with TUI TA Patrick to make finalize details about the hardware used in the project. Currently, the wand will most likely sense user blowing with a microphone, and the wand itself will use an accelerometer to sense position. The wand will connect to an arduino board,  which will be connected to a server that outputs bubbles onto a screen via video projector.

New Ideas for Bubble Use:

The bubble wand TUI can sense two kinds of movements: blowing and wand movement.

We are currently brainstorming using the virtual bubble to transmit information from the "blower" to other users.

A new idea we have explored is using the accelerometer to sense the type of motion the wand is making while bubbles are blown... If one is jumping up and down the bubbles will move in a bouncing motion or if one spins, the bubble may go around in circles. This could encourage people to add dancing to their play.

Another concept may involve including a camera in the project. The wave of the wand may indicate how wide a shot the camera will take, and the image itself can be "encoded" into the bubble itself. Once popped, the bubble will reveal the picture.

It would be interesting to explore the packaging of data in the bubble using QR codes stamped onto the bubble. Users may be able to capture pictures of the bubbles, along with the QR-encoded information, and "pop" them at home, resulting in a data transfer from "Bubblespace" back to real space.

Related Work:

Jellyfish Party: Blowing Soap Bubbles in Mixed Reality Space

Yasuhiro Okuno, Hiroyuki Kakuta, and Tomohiko Takayama, Kazuhiro Asai

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=946248.946807

Blowing Gently

Antenna Design

http://antennadesign.com/ant.html