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Lubbock First Friday Art Trail Photograph

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I know what you're thinking, "what kind of extra terrestrial - mind control device crash landed in West Texas this time?!"

My partner Andrew Triplett and I built this project for a graduate level robotics studio; we call it Floriculture because we referenced botanical systems to generate both the patterning and the mechanical behavior.

What does it do?

Put simply, it is an interactive display.

The surface extends and retracts based on your proximity to the surface. This creates a sort of playful interaction as the wall is reacting to you.

So how do you go about building something that can react?

First you have to give it a brain *evil scientist laugh*

We used this fantastic micro-controller made by this fantastic company Arduino . Fantastic. This is what tells what to do what... It's less complicated than it sounds, but you do have to have a general knowledge of scripting and circuit building.

The next thing you will need is some kind of sensor. This is the input that will feed values to your microcontroller. They sort of serve as the projects eyeballs. We used these ultrasonic range finders:﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Max Sonar Proximity Sensors w/ Acrylic housing



We bought these from Sparkfun Electronics . They were modestly priced and provided adequate range for our purposes.

Next thing you will need is an actuator of some kind. We used high torque servo motors (from SparkFun) that served as the brawn. This is what pushes / pulls the surface. ﻿﻿

High Torque Servo Motor



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Plasma Cut Steel Frame (removing slag) Finally, you need something that will hold all of this up. This is 16 gauge mild steel that has been cut using a CNC guided plasma cutter. The process is quick (and faily uncomplicated) but it was quite messy and labor intensive to a) clean all of the bits of metal leftover from cutting b) keep the metal from rusting.﻿﻿﻿

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This project had a relatively low budget due to the fact that college is EXPENSIVE! The housing mechanism needed to be made of something strong but light and cheap but not cheap looking. For the 'guts' we laser cut 1/8" clear acrylic and for the shell we used PVC piping.



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PVC / Acrylic housing mechanism (both from Home Depot)﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿





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Mechanical Assembly w/ motors

﻿ The result was tectonic in nature, easily assembled and disassembled, and provides adequate access to the mechanics for tuning/wiring and so on.. ﻿﻿﻿﻿

I am so glad I had the opportunity to be a part of this project, it provided such a unique and challenging learning experience!﻿





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