We are now going to have a real client for our user interface!Go on-line to Ali Mazalek's class page, look at the SWIKI as we discussed in class, study the PDF design document, and try to design interfaces which will be of maximal use for their process as her class designs, builds, experiments with behaviors for the plant robots. Your contribution can be in the form of on-line java applets, or it can be visual design studies with words and images and even short video sequence that you act out with your hands.
Try to place yourself in the mindset of the students at Georgia Tech, and ask what might be the most useful for them to have available to look at and to play with.
The code I showed class to control plants is here.
Below are notes from our in-class brainstorming about design ideas for the robotic plants. Feel free to use those as references from which to work.
Ideas suggested in the in-class brainstorming:
- One plant in the group is the black sheep. turns differently from the others.
- Combine draw interface with Plant project control/simulation
- Default behaviors for when nobody is around (eg: shy plants all turn to look at each other and then get shy). To draw people in.
- Attract plants when you get closer, but they shy away if you get too close.
- If you specify animation key values, they will linearly interpolate between them.
- Variety of properties and sliders to adjust them. So there are mappings between high level properties and (with some A.I. behavior system in-between) the low level primitive values that are actually puppeteered.
- Create a mini-scripting language for how a plant responds to various variables.
- The LEDs are 0-255 for each of RED, GREEN, BLUE.
- Building physical simulations...
- Turn LEDS green with jealousy. Have the plants compete for peoples' attention. Connects with the whole "pulsing animation" idea thing.
- If they hear music they can simulate dancing.