Evander Batson
xinhe feng
FluffyLeecy
frankiezek
gaboratparsons
giang063
gracegotlost
lauriewaxman
Siwen Li
Xiaofeng Lin
Yury Gitman
mar28th
Max(TONG WEN)
Soohyun
sabotai
Susan Lin
Darkness Loving Owl
Owl
A piezo speaking owl that communicates when it is in distress from the brightness in the room. It is a darkness loving prototype that I worked on with Minho
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Updates from February, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Behnaz Babazadeh
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Behnaz Babazadeh
Piezo Exercise | 6 emotions
Produced 6 emotions to portray Hello, Goodbye, Leaving, Sad, Dead and Thank you. (More ...)
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Lee
OM-NOM-Garbagecan
OM NOM is kinda scary and encourages waste. When you feed him he RAWRZ angrily, then he’ll aggressively begs for food, though he appreciates your actions after you feed him. If you don’t feed him for 12 hours he’ll get super P/O’d and let you know it.OM-NOM uses a photocell to know when his mouth is open, the LCD screen tells you his emotional state using text and image, and a little speaker lets him emote vocally.
He has 4 states.
+Opening Roar – When he first opens his mouth he kind of RAWRZ.
+Begging – If you leave him open he keeps begging for food / garbage.
+Happy – Once he’s been fed, he’ll emote happily and make an nom nom nom noise.
+Hungry – If you don’t feed him for more than 12 hours he’ll repeatedly make an angry noise every 10 minutes until you feed him / throw something away.
He’s constructed with a cleaned out delivery food container with all the various electronics held in place with duct tape, thumb tacks, and brass hangers. Pretty ghetto, but it works!CODE!
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makingtoys
Lee, great project. But please post your code in the post in the ‘read more’ section.
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makingtoys
this project is awesome. i love this. this is “viral product” material.
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makingtoys
great videos, great documentation.
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Lee
Thanks I fully intend to try and develop this more. I’d be interested to try and figure out how to actually sell it this summer.
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Lee
Toy Fair / Best homework ever
Toy Fair was awesome. Obviously witnessed most of the same things as everyone else, but spent the majority of my time on the bottom floor.
The flying fish were amazing, the simple tail movement buffets the fishes body in the air and makes it look super authentic. I only wish they were smaller, autonomous, and had some flocking code and proximity sensors built in, so you could just release a school of them and let them go. It’d be like living in a fish tank!
Star Wars big head bobble heads! 0 technology here, but I want all of them!
Keepon was stupidly cute. I don’t think it’s new I’m pretty sure I heard of it before, but had never witnessed it for myself.
Bioliods were pretty awesome dancing machines
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Bree
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Bree
Gone to the Toy Fair
I suppose I probably saw the same things everyone else did at toy fair, but since I was wearing an exhibitor badge, I was totally being bounced at many of the top floor booths. The guy at Matel, for example, came just short of evicting me for looking at toys.I saw the creepy coma dogs (someone else already posted pictures) and am wondering how far “illusion of life” should go in certain narratives. One guy working for the company said “better than a real pet!” Not sure about that… I can just imagine some kid wondering why the realistic, breathing dog isn’t waking up, becoming increasingly disturbed. Comatose puppies is a strange concept for a toy.
I of course loved the HEX bugs, but who doesn’t? My bf and I were led through the tour and saw all the cool concepts of desk toys they are making. The tour guide pointed out the intellectual property sign on the wall and mentioned that the company had spent $6million or something just to ward off knock-offs. Interesting stuff. I really wanted one.
I loved the really smart Ollo robots. I thought they not only did cool stuff, but in a smart way. The girl at the table was really nice and liked talking about the bots and challenged me to figure out the “elephant”, who was simply just being guided around a square by simple pushing and shoving. Really smart, really cool!
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minho
Fridge Friends
Yeah. Andy has Fridge friend. My friend is Freezer friend. Each has neutral, lonely, happy and jealous states with two light sensors. Each can check the other one’s door, and express jealous to us. They are very jealous and lonely, so they are not going to stop complaining until we use them.
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minho
Toy Fair
PERFECT PETZZZ
They are doing nothing. Like the name, they are just sleeping. We can see they are breathing, there are little changing on their chest or stomach part. I like this simple idea. Without using complicate and any sensor, it embodies baby animals well. I like these quiet pets, also allergy free.
GLOW CRAZY
The pointer(?) emits ultra-violet light, and the panel seems to absorb the light and keep the light short. I want to know what the material of the panel is. I want this material as my wall paper. It reminds me of graffitiresearchlab , but it much cheaper($25).
BIOLOID
I saw similar robots’ videos a lot on Youtube. I was wondering how they programmed the whole performance. It might be take forever, but I asked them. The new kind of motor called as Actuator(?) remember the angle then send it to computer, so we can make a pose with hand and save it.
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andywallace
Fridge Friends!
Minho and I worked together to create two jealous siblings that live on your refrigerator. One is the freezer and the other is the fridge. Each one is happy when their door is opened, and will get sad if it has not been opened in a while. And if the other door is opened they will get jealous of their brother.
Each creature uses two photoresistors to see when the doors are open, and LCD screen to make faces, and a piezo speaker to make sounds.
Each one has a face and a sound for the following events:
– Neutral – It makes this face when the door is not open, but it has not been too long.- Their Door Opened – Beeps hello and smiles. While the door is open, brief happy soudns play at random intervals.
- Their door closed – Beeps goodbye and winks.
– Lonely – If Fridge Friend goes too long without seeing the light in the, it will put on a sad face and cry at random intervals
- Jealous – If it’s own door has not been opened in a while and the other door is opened, Fridge Friend becomes jealous and will growl and long as the door is open.
The jealous sound will play over and over lowering each pitch and how long it draws out the last growl until the other door is shut again. At a certain point, the growl stops moving down in pitch (so as not to go bellow what the piezo can produce), but the length will continue to increase.
The entire thing is mounted on a box that stay outside of the fridge with the photoresistors being mounted inside and sensing the light.
The crying and other similar sounds happen on a semi-random basis, because no user would want to hear them constantly. In the video, I am using very short amounts of time for everything to trigger, but when actually setting this up, it would take several hours instead of several seconds to become lonely. It could still become jealous very quickly, though, since users don’t generally have their fridge or freezer doors open for very long.
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andywallace
Toy Fair! (AKA, read the post below mine)
I went to Toy Fair along with Thom Hines, Scott and a few other folks on Monday and looked at almost all of the same exhibits. I guess I should have been quicker to post.
The Tandars were definitely the most lifelike toy at the fair (although there was a booth selling sleeping dog toys that were almost creepy in their resemblance to actual napping dogs). They had a wide range of movement, could talk with one another, and most of all just looked alive. We taked about how they had a strong resemblance to the Gelflings from Dark Crystal, except instead of requiring a team of puppeteers, there was just a computer inside. Although the Furby craze has certainly died down, these guys seemed like a good improvement.
We also saw a set of tops that were motorized to keep spinning and were able to battle by being controlled by magnets under the table. They were fairly simple, but had a cool Tron look to them.
The best thing I saw was the prototype for Skylanders, a cross platform video game. Although the actual gameplay seemed somewhat generic, the game will feature about 50 characters, all of which are represented by small figurines. When the figures are placed on a special platform, they are brought into the game and can be used by the player as their character until another figure is swapped out. More than one figurine can be placed if two players want to play. The characters advance and get new skills and attire as they play, and all of this information is stored on the figurine, allowing them to be brought to friends houses and used there etc. I like it because it brought a trading card element to the game since players could trade their high level character for something else, and the actual physical object has value in a way that most games don’t allow for.
All told, Toy Fair was a lot of fun, as it should be with a name like Toy Fair.
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Thom Hines
Toys, Toys, Toys
Taking advantage of our time off from class yesterday, a large group of us went to to the Toy Fair for the greater part of the afternoon. The show was huge, almost overwhelming, and like Yuri said, just the time to walk the floor without even stopping to look would take hours. Fortunately, a lot of booths were obviously not worth stopping at, which gave a few of us guys a chance to spend more time at the fun ones.
My favorite section was definitely where the hi-tech electronic toys were being shown. This section of the show had tons of tows that were doing new and interesting things, and seemed to be experimenting more with product character in much more interactive ways. One of the first that got me pretty excited was Tandars, a little forest creature that has a lot of functionality built into a cute, little body.
The booth itself is actually what first attracted me to Tandars. With its forest-like appearance, it really stood out. The booth really added to the ambient feel of the toy, and it placed the creature in his natural habitat. It was perfect. The creature has sensors all over it’s body so that it detects touching and petting, and proximity sensors to detect when something or someone is nearby. It apparently has over 50 “phrases”, which combined with its eye motions and moving ears, really gives you the impression that it is alive and has emotions. Also, if you get two tandars next to each other, they detect each other through IR and communicate. The lady working the booth was obviously really happy to show him off, and she seemed to really have a bond with her Tandars.
Around the corner from there was a game I had recently heard about but didn’t understand until I saw it. Tetris Link is essentially Tetris meets Connect 4. I played most of a round with Andy, Scott and the girl who was working the booth. It was definitely a lot of fun, a nice adaptation of a video game into the board game realm.
And here we are playing with the giant tetris pieces. Scott was trying to use his piece to ruin my place in the photo, just like he tried to do in the game.
And the product I saw the most potential in, as far as finding ways for the concepts and technology to be adapted and used by a variety of companies and businesses, is the video game Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. Instead of saving your game progress and character to the memory on the console, all of your attributes are stored in a small action figure which gets placed on the “portal” hooked up to your game machine (in this case, a Wii). As you build up your character and make advancements, those things get stored in the memory chip of the action figure itself. Then, when you go to play at a friends house or on a different system, you can just set your character on their portal and play with your character. Another interesting feature is the ability to swap out characters at any time. I can see a lot of strategic potential for using one character instead of another at different points in a game.
The portal itself seems to have some pretty cool tech in it. Figurines only need be placed on it, and almost instantly all of the connections are made and the character is in the game. When a new figurine is placed on top, the portal changes color, depending on the type of power that character has. And with each action you make in the game, the portal seamlessly syncs up the figurine to reflect the character’s latest stats.
The figurines are just about three inches tall and feel like the figurines we saw all over the show, but knowing that the character in the game that you may have spent hours building up and developing makes it seem more special. It’s as if the figurine somehow was that video game character, and vice versa. One of the guys at the show booth mentioned that this development could have a deeper level of meaning, too, when kids started to trade their figurines or started collecting them. A level 7 character would be more valuable than a level 3, and perhaps the rarity or specialness of certain characters would provide a built-in sort of stock market for these characters. Could be interesting, and I really look forward to seeing where this kind of technology goes.
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scottpeterman
Toy Fair
I was pretty intrigued by the spyro the dragon action figure/game combo. I’m sure some of this is due to great personal fondness for the original ps1 spyro the dragon video games, but this fairly pedestrian but fun seeming cooperative action-brawl game looked fun enough on its own using the wii controls. The game itself was secondary to the character system, which featured a pad that allowed the player to place one of 30 spyro action figures on the included pad accessory and play as that action figure in game, making up a total of 8 classes of powers. Game status/unlockables/upgrades are all stored to the action figure and can travel cross-platform. Sure it’s an excuse to make more $ from a game, but at least it’s doing it by doing something cool. Also, you can play coop by putting any two action figures on the pad. Very neat.
These Tandars were pretty detailed! Sure they still kinda look like Furbies/Gizmo, but their faces were so advanced. Their eyes were so bizarre and glistening, and they really had so many distinct expressions. So creepy, with their little human baby faces. Pretty cool that puppets of 25 years ago, that took 5-10 pioneers, can now really be approximated by a reasonably priced electronic toy. Now someone needs to make something that ISN’T a gremlin…
These toys were really cool, and example of a very simple and reproducible mechanical element. This playset was really neat, the battle element very engaging. Plus the guy who showed us the booth turned out to be the lead product designer. He pretty much does the whole thing himself, and these toys are pretty big. Interesting conversation!
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Alvaro Soto
Toy day Extravaganza
Very cool visit to the Toy fair, my Favorite things I have to be honest, considering we are working with technology, are the wooden toys, but is not because they don’t have any technology. I like is the simplicity and detail in design. yet, these toys manage to have a very appealing look for children. I Think a very cool project would be to reconsider these wooden toys embedding technology playing with the contrast between the design detail and the fascination of technology in toys.
Here are some of my favorite toys:
My other favorite is this Chamaleon by Think Geek. I find it very fun to use, but I like the idea of the many possibilities one could do with the same technology.
I also like them because they gave me one….
Finally the floating fishes are so cool they have this kinetic movement on them that attracks people. Besides they are flying making no noise and are fishes on the air of course
Last but not least a picture of Naz as a Kauzebot
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Yury Gitman
Take your stuff out of “Uncategorized”
Hi All,
Can you take your stuff out of the “Uncategorized Category”. Nothing belongs in there. That Catagory is getting delated very soon, so please more ALL of your post off it.
Thank you! Y.
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Alvaro Soto
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Behnaz Babazadeh
Companion Concepts
Plantheropy | A plant companion that gives your plant compliments throughout the day. It also gives digital read of daily plant care, such as watering schedule based on that individual plants needs.
Girls Kit-to-Go | This device not only aids in concealing feminine products but it also acts as a personal messenger. You can record to-do lists and use it to as an ambient light in your bag. It can also work as a compact.
Hangman | Hangman is a closet companion that lights up when the door is opened. It immediately gives weather and brief news information. It also updates you on your latest facebook notifications and tweets. It can also works as a outfit database. You can take images of your outfits and store them, then later returning to them to decided on your next look.
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Bree
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Alvaro Soto
Blue Sky Ideas for a loyal companion
Smellysock
Smellysock would be great for kids and adults would love it too. I am imagining a smelly sock that you could put in your underwear drawers and help the odors go away. Smelly sock is activated with a small amount of light and helps you find that pair of socks you cant find most of the time. But you should be good to smelly sock as well, she likes her ears to be pressed and that way you make everything fresher inside her smelly home.
Froggylab
I never had the opportunity to to dissect a frog when I was a kid so the idea of having a cute Froggylab its amazing to me. Now that Im a big boy I like to play with good knives in the kitchen, but I always forget to put the knife back in its place after washing it. So there is where this Froggylab can help you. she hasnt died yet and like in all the movies it hurts when you take the the weapon out of the stomach. So don’t do that for a long time to froggylab because it will hurt her. She might sing, scream, light up.. who knows. but definitely, she will let you know is no good to do that to her.happycoupletea
They are a couple and they cant be away from each other. one will sing when its time for more hot water or its grose inside for you to drink. You must keep them united though. because they are a very dependent crazy couple
Lee and 
Making Toys 
makingtoys 8:42 pm on February 17, 2011 Permalink |
Please just your code in “read more”. thnks!