Exercise: Medium Fidelity Prototype

New for 2025; text not yet final.

For our purposes, ‘medium-fidelity prototype’ refers to a physical test of a machine concept which answers essential questions regarding interaction and behavior without getting bogged down in technical implementation.

In most cases, such a prototype includes:

• simple physical mockup, perhaps out of cardboard

• motion produced using puppeting or other non-technical means

• a human acting as the computation agent (i.e. a wizard-of-oz setup)

• a set of carefully crafted written rules to serve as the behavior program

• a realistically configured background location or scenario

In most cases, the final results will include:

• video captured from the perspective of any future on-system cameras

• third-person perspective video documentation of representative interactions

• tabular results documenting tests with naive users

Learning Objectives

The assignment will help you to:

1. Identify key technical requirements for sensing, actuation, and gesture to implement all aspects of a human-robot interaction scenario.

2. Design and fabricate a simplified physical mockup prototype sufficient to test interaction behaviors.

3. Write algorithmic rules for human operators.

4. Practice human execution of human-machine interaction performance.

5. Evaluate and document the prototype with naive participants.

Key Questions

Our essential purpose is to explore surprisingly animate machines which use embodied behavior as a creative medium. Our current focus is on human-machine interaction, keeping an eye on the hidden agency involved in both automation and remote control.

We are building simplified mockups to evaluate human-machine interactions and identify plausible technical solutions.

Process: Part 1

Please:

1. Update or write a concise narrative description of your project idea. Please be sure to identify:

   • interaction context: location, environment, audience

   • human purpose: how it is meant to affect human emotion, thoughts or actions

2. Outline specific behaviors which will fulfill this purpose.

3. Sketch a final physical form which can achieve these behaviors.

4. Design a mockup you can quickly fabricate which will allow you to perform this behaviors manually.

5. Detail the exact sensors and actuators which would be available in a fully realized version of this device.

6. Write a detailed behavioral script for a human operator.

   • identify the precise inputs available, and consider how to limit the human to these inputs

   • identify the precise outputs, and writed instructions to limit puppeteering

   • write and/or sketch set of behavior primitives; these are the specific animation gestures available

   • write a set of rules defining when to perform each gesture

   • please capture enough detail that a person outside your group could perform the robot part with only minimal coaching

7. The script will need to be continually revised as interactions are explored. Please be sure to consider both expected and unexpected situations and responses.

Process: Part 2

After Part 1, you should have a fabricated mockup and a detailed performance script. The purpose of these products is to evaluate and refine the proposed behaviors while determining detailed technical specifications for a potential prototype.

Please:

1. Practice the scripted behaviors, paying close attention to adhering to the physical, sensory, and cognitive constraints of the physical system it represents. Take turns with the roles of automation and user.

2. Capture a quality video documenting both the expected interaction and some anticipated variations.

3. Find a naive subject to play the role of user and test the interaction with them. Take note of any novel responses and refine your script.

4. Please consider and identify the following technical requirements:

   • What is the most appropriate scale? I.e. what are the dimensions of the bounding box or characteristic height?

   • What are the minimum required degrees of freedom for your device to perform the expected behaviors? E.g., a tabletop robot might need three planar freedoms plus some specific number of gestural freedoms like head position.

   • What is the minimum number of actuators? E.g. a two-wheel ‘diff drive’ robot uses two motors to move non-holonomically in the 3 DOF of a plane, plus each gesture freedom might require its own servo.

   • How fast does each actuator need to move?

   • What is the minimum number of sensors? What are the type and placement?

   • What surface materials or ready-made objects are essential to the interaction?

5. Please create a new mockup which more closely approximates your technical requirements, especially where it may resolve design ambiguities. This may include:

   • reconstructing to a different scale

   • incorporating more realistic materials

   • adding puppetry degrees of freedom

   • simulating sensors

6. Please practice the new mockup and capture a second quality video documenting both the expected interaction and some anticipated variations.

7. Please update your sketch of the final physical form as needed to include your discoveries and refinements.

Deliverables

Please post a brief report to the appropriate shared folder. Please include the following:

• brief synopsis of the interaction scenario

• revised sketches of a plausible final form

• a detailed script for human performance of the behaviors

• documentation of both first and second puppet mockups (the medium-fidelity prototype)

  • photos of each version

  • edited video of each version