Reverse Brainstorming

During Eugene Shteyn's visit we participated in what he calls reverse brainstorming.

These images show the 70 problems we came up with somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes.

My Short Term List: 15, 17, 62, 70, 13, 35, 44, 3, 68, 24

My Long Term List: 65, 59, 58, 1, 18, 42, 45, 46, 20, 28

The teams Top Three:

Short Term: 70, 10/13, 9

Long Term: 20, 28, 59

Then we talked about three important factors of our project, size, time and cost.

Humans have the tendency to make things that are big enough for them to hold, or carry, and often at the size that would be considered "humanscale". This is close to the size I was planning for our robot.

We discussed the possibility of scaling the object down. If there were several very small bots, what would the project be? What if the bot was larger, the size of the city? It could become a bioreactor power plant. A living, breathing, green mass... constantly reproducing and expanding.

Final Task

On the day that Julian Bleecker visited we also received our final task and team.

Requirements:

Project-Each team is required to design, build, program and test a 'heliotropic smartsurface' that makes use of:

• Solar Energy Harvesting
• Microcontroller programming (Arduino) and circuit building
• Parametric modeling (Digital Project)
• Digital Fabrication

Team 3: David/Ivan/Isaac/Aidan/Laura

Brainstorm Session #1

Brainstorm Session #2:

• What are we trying to do?
• What does it look like?

Smartsurfaces can....

• Do the job for you
• Create smoother interface
• Create dialogue
• Create characters/fictitious life
• Create/allow for understanding/education
• Expand
• Contract
• Distort
• Move
• React
• Light up
• Create shelter
• Sense (the environment and factors of it)
• And many more....

So far we've seen surfaces that...

• track the sun
• reflect the sun
• concentrate the sun
• shade the sun
• inflate
• have and aperture (open and close)
• expand
• have layers
• direct the sun

From here we began working on a heliotropic clean water system. It involved an ant farm like structure that exposed a purifying system of layered aggregates. The goal was to provide clean water, either to the public or creating a closed system within a building. Additionally, the transparency of the system would serve as an educational element.

We were quickly deferred from this idea. It became obvious that most groups were suffering because they were not operating within the constraints. The objective is to make a heliotropic smartsurface... not to solve the worlds clean water crisis. Therefore, we went back to the drawing board.

Team Brainstorming Session #3:

From here we moved forward with the working concept of an algae powered "heliobot". Essentially we would be creating a robot containing algae. Through photosynthesis a particular strain of algae, C. reinhardtii, produces hydrogen that would be captured in a fuel cell and used to power the robots movement. More on this strain of algae can be found here.

Getting Down to work....

We seemed to have a hard time getting together over these past two weeks. When talking about group work in class, the professors informed us of the reason we are in teams of 6. Apparently studies have shown that teams of 5 to 6 work better than smaller teams. In groups of 5 to 6 there is more room for subgroups and fresh ideas. This has proven to be true. After having three meetings with 4 or less members present we had not gotten very far.

Finally, with a 5th member present we were able to move forward.

Here Aidan is hard at work on our sketch model robot. We used parts from some sort of erector set and a SmartWater bottle for assembly. The robots front legs, controlled by motors, pull the robot forward, dragging its' wheeled rear-side behind.

Fiction vs. Reality

After listening to the lecture of visitor Julian Bleecker I began to think differently about some of the language I was using with my group.

Our physical (presentable) project was only a model, given that in "real life" polystyrene and servos would be replaced by other materials and possible mechanisms. I kept using the term real life to describe the intended application (what some might call overall concept) of our project.

Julian said something about using fiction to test... (I don't want to say anymore before I check my source. Sometimes I wish I had a notebook and pencil attached to my side) I felt like this is exactly what we are doing, setting up a fictional scenario to test a possible real-life application.

...if what we have created is a fictional scenario, then have we created a fictional object?

Is it possible that our model is fiction, and what it represents is reality? (I say reality rather than fact because there might faults (impossibilities) in our proposal)

However John brought up a good point, why are we calling the model fiction when in fact it is the only piece of the project that exists in our reality...?

Testing and Finalizing

Moving forward with our project meant lots of cutting... laser cut acrylic, several polystyrene strips, and tangles of fishing line.

After testing the torque of the stepper motor against the string and panels we realized it wouldn't suffice. Servos were able to pull four units pretty well, so we put three on each side of the acrylic board. We used MDF to secure the servos and as a base for the Arduino boards.

*For reference, a panel is one of the small strips, one unit consists of 4 panels. There are 12 units per bay.

I like this video clip because it shows a successful moment as well as our motive to remain within a time line.

Back to the Drawing Board

Task 4: Models and Direction

We have narrowed our approach leaving behind the idea of a moving garden bed. It seems that we have arrived upon an agreeable form, at least for the moment. After talking about flexible materials for model making I went rummaging through scrap material and found a healthy supply of polystyrene strips. Substituting the flexible plastic for bimetal or memory shape alloy we made a quick sketch model in order to map out the movement and better understand what we are doing and why.

We began to apply this movement to a building and soon realized we were not all on the same page.

It may be getting late in the game, but we need to go back to the drawing board- and show each other what we are thinking rather than just talking about it.

Task 4

Objectives:

This exercise prompts you to propose, develop, deconstruct and implement and idea based on the principles of an interactive, heliotropic smartsurface. The smartsurface concept should constitute a set of functionalities that otherwise exist in 3-dimenstional space, collapsed into an ostensibly 2-dimenstional space, thereby gaining additional functionality and/or appeal.

Task 4 seems to be even more open ended than the previous tasks. However, by revisiting the objective after a week of brainstorming and sketch modeling, I am reminded of a very helpful constraint. Looking back at your goals with fresh eyes can be one of the most important and influential steps in the process of design. This allows you to carry forward with more defined and realized intention.

Our group started with a whirlwind of brainstorming. As prompted by our professors we left no idea off our list, no possibility was considered impossible.

..but eventually we had to cross a few things out, for the sake of narrowing our goal.

After presenting three potential problems/solutions to the class we began working on a synthesis of our two most intriguing and innovative approaches.

One of these approaches was to create some sort of surface or bed upon which a garden could be grown in an urban environment, for example on top of a roof. This is an already existing practice, however we are seeking to maximize the potential application. Say you live in a city apartment building and your apartment association would like to start a garden on the building's roof. You have plenty of money and everything you need to get going. Of course there is one problem, the skyscraper next door shades your building for a considerable portion of the day. Our surface would mimic the properties of the plants growing atop (and maybe in/through) them, and would move in some way to locate the sun, and follow it thereafter. Being an inherently site specific design the surface could be programmed for the fixed interference.

The second was inspired by venetian blinds. In this approach our main objective was distributing natural sunlight throughout a building. How could we use a surface to channel sunlight into the basement of a building? Things like fiber optics and light tubes do this already, but we are interested in a kind of passive surface... perhaps one that the user can call upon actively? Maybe with the flick of a switch we can "turn on the sun".

Task 3 / Homework 3

Still building on our arduino knowledge, this week adding modeling software Digital Project into the mix.

Objective:

You are to make a heliotropic field that is responsive to the movement of the sun. Use this project to build on previous work and to refine your understanding of a heliotropic system. Is it possible that the shadow of one cell might affect its neighbor? Is it possible for cells to work together to share the available sunlight?

For presentation:

-Digital Project model and animation

-Operational prototype of 3 working / related cells.

Our group worked really well together this week. We met briefly after receiving our assignment on friday and then broke up for some independent brainstorming. On sunday we met for a brief team brainstorm where we were able to agree upon a design an delegate work to get this thing started.

My main job was to build the physical model and work out the movement. After making a rough sketch model Josiah Damien and I met to get the arduino hooked up and test the movement. We worked things out and I was off to clean up and expand our model.

Replacing what were originally t-pins with round headed sewing pins we made awesome Macgyver-esque ball joints!

These ball joints created a great pivot point so that we were able to achieve our goal of a stationary base and separate plane moving in shear.

In this test run our movement is quite smooth. Some team members were skeptical about using rubber bands to keep the plane in tension, but by using the bands we were able to achieve the desired movement with only two (rather than four) servos. Each servo is paired with a rubber band so that when the servo returns to its starting position the plane remains in motion.

The clip below shows our final model.

Task 2 / Homework 2

After working independently to make lights blink with our arduino boards, we gathered into groups, in true Smartsurfaces fashion, to expand on our newly developed skills. This week we combined the LDR light depending sensors with servo motors to create a contraption that follows or tracks light on two axes.

Objectives:

Your team's task is to design, build, program and test a device that tracks a light source (handheld flashlight). This system should operate on dual axes and be active. Ideally it should be capable of:

• Tracking the light horizontally
• Tracking the light vertically
• Indication when it is in alignment with the light.

Video courtesy of team member Damien Stonick.

What you may not be able to see in the video are the lights that turn on when the light is "directly" in the center. I say "directly" only because we rigged up two LDRs so we could incorporate two colored LEDs, if for no other reason than spectacle. When the light (flashlight) is directly on one of the two LDRs (located in the center) a red or blue light shines through the smiley face cut out of the base.

The code for this project can be found on team member Michael Mathieu's blog.