Tech Time

On Tuesdays session we had demonstrations from both Peter and Jason on technologies we could use in our projects that might be relevant. Peter talked through Arduino's which I had heard about last semester in Digitial Prototyping when we used a Makey Makey. The Arduino is a micro-controller which basically means its a tiny computer that you can fit onto a whole bunch of other attachments to support WiFi and Bluetooth. While they look interesting they are probably not super applicable for our project unless we get around to implementing additional functionality like vibrations and temperature controls.

Jason talked through fiducial marker and how you could use images as markers to create a connection between them using the Kinect. He talked through Reactivision and some of the functionality that the Kinect has out of the box, being able to detect hands open or closed. While this could be interesting to use for our project, because we are planning to have the Kinect mounted from above it will be unable to detect bodies in the normal way. So we will have to use the depth sensor and take the difference of a stock frame with no users in the interaction space and one with the user in the space. Alternatively we could use the infrared camera and put some sort of reflective spots or wearable onto our user. However our team decided that it would be better to avoid putting things on people if possible to keep the interaction simple and barrier free.

Additionally the kinect has a full HD camera which we could use to provide a live stream of what was happening in the installation or record previous interactions and play them back to attract users to the exhibit. Finally the team discussed implementing gestures using the infrared cam having dots on a users hand. Hand open would show the dot and hand closed would hide it so we could have these two states affect the story telling process.