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Playtest @ The Children's Museum
Theresa Chen — Wed, 02/25/2009 - 17:46
On Monday, we drove down to the Children's Museum to do some playtesting of painting materials and paper sizes. We were trying to see what was most commonly used and what the kids preferred when painting.
Our observations showed us that kids under 5 tended to not care about the structure of what they were drawing. Even younger seemed to be more concerned with the tactile feeling of the brush and paint and mixing the colors together. Younger kids were done very quickly and were satisfied with quick scribbles on paper. The older kids, around 7 yrs old, would spend longer on the paintings and be almost meticulous about the placement of their colors.
The Children's Museum had a good answer to the question of what paper size to use by having square-cut paper at 14in x 14in. This lets the kids decide to draw portrait or landscape. Keeping around the 14in marker seems to be a good idea considering the size of the kids.
I think the most interesting thing was when Betsy asked these 2 girls about robots. When she asked them whether they liked robots, they both said no. But when Betsy asked what if a robot could paint them a picture, they said they thought it would be so cool.
Meeting the Kokoro Rep
Theresa Chen — Mon, 02/23/2009 - 19:58
Hey again.
Lauren posted about the Toy Fair, but there was something else I wanted to mention about it that I thought was really cool.
We got to meet Eiji Kojima, US representative of Kokoro, a Japanese robotics company that specializes in lifelike humanoid robots. Ever see videos of the very pretty female robot receptionist? They built that.
Kojima sat and talked with us about the projects Kokoro has done, explaining some of the challenges they went through to get their "Act-droids" to seem lifelike. There has been a lot of research done in facial & body movement and skin texture. It was really impressive.
Personally though, I was more interested in their Kee-pon, the robot meant to foster communication with autistic kids. It was interesting hearing how the simplistic yellow robot could form a connection to people.
NYC Toys R Us and Toy Fair
Lauren — Mon, 02/23/2009 - 19:12
Last week, most of our team members took a research trip to New York City. There, we attended the Toy Industry Association Toy Fair and the Toys R Us.
At the toy fair, we were able to see first hand many of the robotics toys currently on the market. In addition, we gained valuable contacts in the area of children's painting products. It was also very useful to study toys which have been designed for our target demographic. This will be particularly helpful in our interface design.
At Toys R Us, we each built our own robots as part of the RobotGalaxy exhibit. Here, we were able to create a robot by choosing a torso, arms, and legs, each with their own unique functions. We then assembled and named them. We also explored the many other robotics toys within the store.
Week #6: Prototyping
Theresa Chen — Sat, 02/21/2009 - 00:52
Hello. Theresa here, artist and one of the designers on the team.
We've been busily prototyping and running tests on various components so we can make further prototypes for our robotic painter. Charles and I have been working on the paint-distribution mechanism and deciding on paper and paint types. Charles has also been working on the robotic arm with Rebecca. Lauren and Rebecca have been working on paper distribution. And Lindsay, Lauren, and Betsy have been working on the touchscreen & brush which the children will be using. Also, Shashank and I have been working on the layout within the museum, creating rough diagrams and 3D models for visuals.
And of course, our producer, Laura, is busily running about with lots of tasks, including planning the arrival of the high school girls. ^_^
We've had a couple of guests this week come in and visit our project room, the most exciting of which was MTV. They were in love with Aibo, our studio pet, who showed us a new trick when he toppled over after looking up at one of the guests. Aibo is definitely hitting it off with people, kids and adults alike, and becoming more lovable the more he walks around our office. We've recently reset him to a newborn. Hopefully, this will give us a chance to have better communication and recognition with the robot.
A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks that, due to our excitement and busy schedules, we've neglected to post about. I'll be backdating some posts in the next couple of days to fill in the missing gaps. Pictures will be included.
STEM special report
Laura — Wed, 02/11/2009 - 10:15
"STEM" stands for "science, technology, engineering and mathematics" and is closely related to robotics outreach programs such as ours. Yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had a special report on STEM education. I was particularly interested by the article on encouraging more diversity in STEM fields. It mentioned Tonya Groover and the University of Pittsburgh's Technology Leadership Initiative, which provides high school students opportunities, tools, and motivations to excel in Computer Science.
Thanks to Scott Stevens for pointing this special report out to us!
We met Penny Arcade today!
Charles — Wed, 02/11/2009 - 09:50
So the guys from Penny Arcade came to visit the ETC today (they were giving a talk yesterday at the University Center). They did a walk-around to every project room and we got their last time-slot at 5:00pm.
My first question to them was which was Gabe and which was Tycho... because apparently they don't look anything like their characters from the strip. Also Gabe and Tycho aren't their real names (it's Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins respectively)... I'm such a lousy fanboy, I should have known that. Reading their strip (as well as vgcats, apple-geeks, xkcd etc) was a daily ritual when I used to have an actual job :P
Anyways, we gave them the whole shpeel about our clients, our three ideas and the one we finally chose. They seemed very interested in the robot painter particularly since it merged aspects of what they were interested in themselves (art and technology). They were actually very eager to help too, throwing all sorts of ideas at us for the actual implementation (ie. using the RFID features of the surface table to figure out which brushes, showing us a symbolic programming language site etc). I think they were having a ball because when Drew came to pick them up to leave Mike wanted to stay a while longer. We were all like, dude you're more than welcome to stay and help us build this thing :P But alas, they had to get going.
Look they even mentioned us in their blog... OMG We made it to the Penny Arcade blog! Whoohoo! We're famous now!
Well that was an easy choice
Charles — Fri, 02/06/2009 - 18:31
We went to meet with Jane from the Children's Museum today to discuss our 3 robot concepts. We were totally worried that she'd just be happy with them all and leave the final decision up to us... which meant we'd probably be spending the rest of the semester still deciding on a concept :P
1/4 Presentation
Laura — Wed, 02/04/2009 - 21:25
Time flies… it's a quarter of the way into the semester already! On Monday we presented our project work thus far.
We got a ton of helpful feedback from faculty and staff during walkarounds.
Thanks to Jennifer Gilbert for taking photos!
Let the backdating begin!
Laura — Mon, 02/02/2009 - 19:00
This will be the first of several backdated entries. We’ve been sharing research information within the team via email, and now we’re copying that info onto the blog and tagging it to make it easy to find.
Three project concept proposals
Laura — Thu, 01/29/2009 - 19:00
Our original three project concept proposals, as presented to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.
