About
With the rise of autonomy, and breakthroughs almost everyday in the field of Artificial Intelligence, what if the objects around us, could interact with us and express themselves?
This is an interactive exploratory project that my team mate and I worked on, under the guidance of Designer, Shobhan S, for 3 weeks and showcased the project in the Rangoli Exhibition space on MG Road, Bangalore, India.
Our product, Squishy, is a stress ball that one would have in an office space.
Long hours on the screen and an intense workload does take a toll on the human body. What if your stress ball, Squishy, could express its concern for you, distract you when it realizes you've been on a screen for long, and plays around with you?
Concept video - Squishy
Summary
We started off by choosing an inanimate object to give life to, and named it “Squishy”. We then sketched out the various mechanisms for the actions we wanted Squishy to carry out. After this was finalized, I began the manufacturing process by creating the mechanism out of wood, in the workshop. Once built, my teammate and I exhibited our contraption at the Rangoli Center at MG Road Metro Station, and the following were some of the reactions I recorded.
Reaction Video at Exhibition
Process
Choosing an Object
We started off this project by ideating on what object we would like to animate/automate and chose a sphere. We then thought that the stress ball would be a good purpose it could serve.
We then made a small demo, of how the ball could express itself, through a Stop Motion Animation.
When the hand caresses Squishy, it feels happy and soaks in the attention.
To make Squishy squish, we needed a mechanism and decided to make a piston mechanism that could give us the desired motion.
Making the mechanism with wood and using an Arduino to move the motor.
Squishy was't squishing as our motor was too weak (6V, 200RPM), so, we had to upgrade to a 300RPM motor which also eventually failed.
Finally we used a 12V 500RPM motor and connected the circuit and were ready to test.
As we were testing, we noticed the motor was quite slow and when we tried to speed it up, our pontentiometer in the circuit blew.
Thus, we took the decision to connect the motor directly to the battery and not use a microcontroller, thus having to control the motor manually by connecting and breaking the circuit.
We then made a base and mount for our piston mechanism and a cage for the motor so that its vibrations are dampened.
Testing Final Mechanism
We then put the mechanism in a plinth to give it a final test.
Once it was all working well, we made a new plinth, painted it, and finally, our set up for Squishy was ready.
A group project by Srushti G and Calvin J Stanley.