Project Octofun
Reflective robotics and connectivity
Project Octofun aims to create a playful and fun interaction between a physical object and the audience. By creating an object that seems to almost have its own personality, the audience gets the chance to form a connection with the octobots through motion. When controlled by the audience, the octobots collectively spin around a designated area. The collective movement almost looks like a dance, where each octobot shows its personality through the spinning motion. Although they are all controlled by the same type of movement, they move around differently, based on their individual shape and design. This creates a collaborative dance through collective movement and audience interaction.
Meet the Octobots
Jeremy
Jeremy was the first octobot created as a part of the project at MOME. He is comprised of three simple parts:
The bottom brissels, which ensure smooth movement on a flat surface, the octopus like legs, which create a fun movement and unpredictable spinning, and lastly the DC motor which spins the octobot.
Oliver
Oliver shares many characteristics with his fellow Octobot Jeremy. Mainly their technical build and shape, which are largely the same. The biggest difference between the two is the octopus like arms. Olivers are slightly longer, and therefore changes the way he moves differently. In addition to this, he also has a slightly different DC motor.
The Creative Process
Project Octofun was developed as part of an international collaboration, between students from both MOME in Budapest Hungary, and Aalborg University in Denmark. The course challenged students to work together to create a reflective robot, with focus on connectivity.
During this project, we used our different educational backgrounds to work together to create an interactive robot. The robot runs on an Arduino board connected to a computer, where data gets processed within the Arduino IDE, and transferred to Touch Designer through serial communication. The idea originated in the desire to create a project that would be fun to both create and interact with through play. We wanted to create a connection between the audience and the robots, by encouraging them to be curious, and explore the functionality of the octobots through play.
Each octobot can be controlled via a leap motion detector. This device allows the audience to control the speed at which the octobots turn, by moving their hands closer or further away from the leap. The right and left hand control each their octobot. This gives the audience full control play with the robots alone, or in pairs.