Saturday, April 21, 2012

Spring 2012 Final Projects


I'm very happy with my final projects this term. It is a relief to not have any more deadlines, but I'm also a little perplexed now not having any deadlines to keep me running to school every day. =P

Here are a few of my final project highlights:

Fiori (IAT 337 - Representation and Fabrication)
A fan that mimics the behaviour of a Christmas Tree Worm that retracts when it senses a nearby organism. The Fiori project website contains process and progress documentation and the final project video. Our prototype required complicated mechanical concepts that none of us were familiar with and required some deep thinking and a few suggestions from the professor. We were happy we were able to finish our prototype and get it fully working with the desired behaviour.

Parts were 3d printed, modelled in SolidWorks with the motion powered by one DC motor, and one servo motor, controlled through an Arduino microcontroller and a breadboard. The behaviour is triggered from a Sharp IR Sensor. The rotational motion is also aided with a bearing holding the rotational shaft. The housing is laser-cut acrylic and bended. Blades are cut from plastic with clothing fasteners and thumbtacks held in place, with the retraction being applied from pulling monofilament wire attached at the end of the blades/petals.

Props to the rest of Team Fiori (Jessica Fan, Joyce Lu, Joyce Wong)
Poster - Project Description

Poster - Multi Configurations

RED (IAT 344 - Moving Images)
Final video project narrative inspired by the micronarrative Painted Devils by Fred Chappell from Microfiction. There is a hidden subtext in this video, but it's not obvious unless you are looking for it. The last scene after the credits will give a clue. =)

Props to the rest of For Great Honor Studios (Calvin Dai, Mark Inouye, Trevor Komori)




Cohesify (IAT 334 - Interface Design)
The Cohesify interface project has been focused in this stage on a small vertical slice from the previous
iteration. Specifically, this step was about developing an implemented prototype, the choice of the specific functionality we wanted to demonstrate is the concurrent digital board interaction between the teacher and participating students.