Making Toys

Project Ideas

Simulated Hive Mind

This idea came partially from a project I was working on last semester, and partly from a series of books by Orson Scott Card. What I would like to create is an artificial lifeform that can adapt to its surroundings, and as it encounters other members of it’s ‘species’, it can communicate with them and teach them. If one creature discovers a hazardous area, or learns a more efficient way of doing something, that knowledge will spread and soon all the creatures, will have this enhanced knowledge.

Self-Constructing Teacher

I have been interested in education for a long time, and after being in this program for the last several months, I’ve thought about ways of teaching students through technology. My self-constructing teacher will teach certain skills to a student, and require them to solve problems or create solutions in order to proceed. Sometimes the student will have to do outside research to accomplish these tasks, and as they progress, they will actually be creating the more advanced structures of their curriculum, and will adapt itself to the interests of the student.

Robotic Lazer Tag

Whether for the solitary lazer tagger looking for an opponent or for those hobbyists who would like to move on to a more tactical version of battle bots, I want to create robots that are aware of their surroundings and their opponents, and essentially use artificial intelligence to make use of their surroundings and outthink their opponents.

Database-free CMS

After living in Beirut for a year, I realized that the we tend to take our technology for granted. While we have the benefit of fast and virtually unlimited internet, many parts of the world don’t. I propose to make a CMS that will allow for a simple and efficient way of letting somebody update their own site without having to use a database, while transferring as little data as possible.

Arduino A/C Shield

While most of what we have been focussing on is making things smaller and more energy efficient, there is still a need for high power devices, and the ability to control them. There are many proprietary solutions out there, but I haven’t seen any sort of open standard or universal way of communicating with certain devices remotely and simply. This device would allow for a lot of adjustment based on input from the Arduino, and provide info back to a server.

Micro Web Server

The world is getting more and more connected, and so the ability to have access to information from anywhere is all the more important. A device that could detect a network, collect information, and broadcast in a small hand-held device could be incredibly useful.