Smart Dolls - 國立臺灣大學



Smart Dolls

Burt C.F. Lien (連矩鋒)

CSIE Department, National Taiwan University

p93007@csie.ntu.edu.tw

Abstract

In modern computer networks, there are plenty of cyber figures that you need to communicate with. It is convenient to young generation with no doubt, but not to those elderly people or who do not know anything about a computer. Furthermore, people may lose contacts or information once they walk away from the computer screens. In this work, I am trying to create an ambient device, which can reflect the cyber characters and information without the appearance of a “computer” -- The Smart Doll, which looks just like an ordinary doll with a delicate coating, is a generic platform to represent a cyber character/information.

Introduction

Intuitively, a doll can represent a cyber figure in a natural way. But, how we can reflect an event that happened in cyber space to draw users’ attention? Lights and sounds (future) are considered in this work. We use colored lights (LED) here in corresponding to cyber events.

The Doll is designed to be placed in a person’s desktop, table, bedroom, living room as a decoration, or in the pocket. People can get some specific information that they care by glancing at the Doll. And the Doll can also draw users’ attention by emitting an ambient light when an event is coming.

We manage to create a Doll, made of semi-transparent plastic polymer, and equip it with a wireless communication (Bluetooth) and microprocessor devices inside. The microprocessor is used to control ambient lights, and the communication device is used to communicate with hosts (a PC or a PDA..etc). Among many other methods that we have considered for communication (WiFi, IR, ultra-sound, ..etc), Bluetooth is a matured technology that becomes more and more popular in personal communication network. It takes the advantages of popularity (compared to IR and ultra-sounf), mobility, power effective (compared to WiFi), long range (100meters) and cost effective (around USD3~4 currently). Furthermore, most of person device (laptop computer, PDA, smart phone, cell phone..etc) are equipped with Bluetooth module nowadays. We will then have lots of choice for the host who may send information to the Smart Doll. So in this work, we adopt Bluetooth as the transmission method between hosts and Smart Dolls.

Related Works

The project is quite inspired by the Tangible Media Group– MIT Media Lab, lead by Hiroshi Ishii. Some prototypes from the Lab. are amazing.

MSN Slider[2], made of phidget, attracts my attention when I first see this gadget. By pulling it up and down of a small figure, people can easily observe the online/offline status of their friends. Ambient Device[3] company produce some graceful objects that can display information (temperature, stocks…etc) from its internal sensors or from internet. MSN robot[4] is an internet agent which deliver the latest information to the users. Cindy Smart Doll[5] is equipped with 2 16-bit processors and sound recognition device that can interact with people.

Designing

Among our goals, the 1st prototype is implemented mainly for MSN/Skype application. We set the following 3 targets to achieve:

1. Create an Ambient device (the Smart Doll) to connect to cyber figures;

2. Mapping a meaningful color to each cyber event;

3. This should look aesthetic, just like a subtle decoration at home;

4. To hide the computer behind (the Smart Doll).

Infrastructure

[pic]

System Requirements

• Hardware

a MCU (for I/O control, and serial communication with Bluetooth module)

a Bluetooth module (RF, baseband, with SPP profile)

some LEDs with different colors (adapt to various applications)

[pic] [pic]

• Software

a program for MCU serial interface and I/O control

Applications on Windows or WinCE (the Core function)

[pic]

• Coating (packaging)

A human mimic coating made of materials that can deliver an ambient light effectively. We drew 2 drafts (a boy and a girl) by hand for implementing a real 3D model on the computer.

[pic]

1st Prototype

Since 3D design is going underway, we preliminarily assembly the prototype inside a small carton and put a semi-transparent cap on the top.

Outline –

[pic] [pic]

We put 4 different colored LED on the system – RED, GREEN, ORANGE, and BLUE, in respect to different events.

Ambient Light—

[pic] [pic] [pic]

[pic] [pic] [pic]

Skype Application

Scenario:

1. SD activated when users (with a bluetooth equipment) are approaching.

2. When the remote peer is ON-LINE, the device beam a RF signal to SD to light up the GREEN LED; if AWAY, light up RED LED; if DND, light up BLUE LED; if OFF-LINE or HIDE, turn off all lights.

3. When the remote peer sends a message, GREEN LED starts to blink.

Care net Application

Scenario:

1. Construct a care net sensor network (not within the domain of this proposal)

2. Use Smart Doll to reflect one’s (elderly people who live alone) health condition

GREEN light stands for a healthy condition;

RED light stands for a health warning

note: the detailed representation of lights will be describer in another project.

Other Applications

• Child safe net

if child (with a SD) is out of the Bluetooth RF range, sends a warning message to his/her parents.

• Security lock

if SD is out of the Bluetooth RF range, lock the computer

• Internet agent

mapping the SD to a special event in Internet (weather, stocks, e-mail…)

• Reminder

if a pre-defined event is approaching, SD light up an ambient light for reminding

• Home security

equip SD with a motion sensor and place it in the living room. Once it detects an unexpected motion, sends a warning message

• Ambient Thermograph

equip SD with a thermal sensor and reflect the temperature with its ambient light

Future Work

According to the prototype we’ve created, a much real Smart Doll is implemented underway. We’re designing a smaller Doll PCB, which will refine the package size toward an ideally (60H*20W*20L mm) that users can carry, and not draw too much users’ attention when existing.

Some more samples (50~100 pieces) will be manufactured for field trial. Target users will be classified to 4 groups (1. CS related students, 2. non-CS related students, 3. people who uses MSN/Skype, and 4. people who do not know computer at all). We will collect user feedbacks and evaluate the possibility of commercialize the Doll.

Within all the applications that mentioned above, I am quite interested at implementing the back-end sensor environment for social care net. I will try to deploy some Smart Doll, which equipped with microphone or motion sensors, to the house at which the elderly people live alone. I will then design a distributed Smart Doll net where the detected information can be routed to the host and sent to remote peer in consequence. The sensor collected information will be transferred to meaningful materials and be reflected at the Doll which owned by his/her younger relatives.

References

1. Tangible Media – MIT Media Lab.... Hiroshi Ishii

2. MSN Slider (phidget),



3. Ambient Device – Orb,

4. MSN robot (Internet Agent)

5. Cindy Smart Doll,

6. Ishii, H. and B. Ullmer (1997) “Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms,” Proceedings of ACM CHI’97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 234–241, 1997.

7. Weiser, M., Brown, J.S., “Designing Calm Technology,” (verified June 4, 2004).

8. Mynatt, E.D., Rowan, J., Jacobs, A., Craighill, S. “Digital Family Portraits: Supporting Peace of Mind for Extended Family Members,” Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Apr 2001) pp.333-340.

9. Mankoff, J., Dey, A.K., Hsieh, G., Kientz, J., Ames, M., Lederer, S., “Heuristic evaluation of ambient displays,” CHI 2003, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2003, pp.169-176.

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PDA

RF

User A

Smart Doll

PC

desktop

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