Author: Matt Franklin

I'm a recovering engineer + sales guy... BSEE from UMD 2004, and then 15 years of working with signal processing, AV, control systems, networking, and other gadgetry (mostly B2B). Now I'm in the Master of Human-Computer Interaction program, graduating in August 2020. I have pretty solid experience with: - Linux - audio - video - rs232/422/485/midi/dmx protocols - sketchup and other cad tools - soldering - music (mostly guitar, but others too) - general troubleshooting - networking (wired + wireless) - signal processing - streaming video/audio - python I have some experience with or am mediocre at: - woodworking - welding - laser cutting - sewing - reverse engineering - ML (none really but I'm currently in a class) - some javascript - rusty with C++ and Java, but used to be decent - tube amplifiers - RF

Assignment 4: Burning Down the House

I have to admit, I kinda thought this particular solution was a little cliche at first, but then just this week, I accidentally left a burner on low, and walked away for an hour. Luckily nothing got too badly damaged, but I’ve gained a new respect for practical solutions to everyday problems.

Here’s the plan:

Attach a sensor to the knob to know when it’s not in the off position. This could even be a simple switch (today we’re using a potentiometer in case we someday want to know how high the burner is set).

From there we add a sensor to tell when the cook has walked away. We don’t really want a visual indicator that’s always on when the burner is on, or we’ll learn to ignore it. Today I’m using the HC-SR04 provided in class.

From there it’s just a matter of selecting a timeframe, and an indicator. For the purposes of the demo, we’ll use 5 seconds, but in real life something like 5 minutes is probably about right. For an indicator, I’ve gone with a red LED for the demo, but perhaps a text message or IFTTT notification on my watch would be more practical long term.

Below I’ve laid out the state diagram, wiring of the demo, and a picture of it in action. There’s a link to the zipped code at the bottom.

Let me know what you think!

 

burner.zip

Near Future Tech for Accessibility

There are a bunch of interesting applications of sensing with machine learning, but the most interesting to me is at 20 minutes in.

I have a friend with face blindness, and it has at times led to some awkward interactions when she sees people out of context. This would really help her (once they shrink it down a bit):

Of course we’re not really focusing on machine learning applications in this class, but the idea of using sensing to address a need for accessibility, which can have additional implications for a broader audience as well.

 

Assignment 3: What to do?

As Herb Simon said:

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

My workspace has more than enough information to constitute an overabundance, and as a result, I don’t know what to pay attention to. The most obvious culprit is the sticky note. They’re a great reminder, but once you have more than a couple of them, I don’t know which one is most urgent.

My proposed near-future solution is to embed a simple LED indicator into the post-it to indicate how long until it is due, so that at a quick glance, I can see what I should be focusing on without having to read each note and prioritize.

I would expect something like this could be feasible in the next five years with current trends in battery efficiency, low power IoT processors, the constantly lowering costs of the hardware, and the physical scale we’ve already accomplished (see image below)

I mocked this up using a potentiometer and digital input as a proxy for remaining time and status of completion:

 

notestate – Fritzing and Arduino code

Assignment 2: Expect the Unexpected

Problem

I read through a number articles and lists of problems people with disabilities face, and was intrigued by one I found that mentions that deaf people are often jumpy because they are regularly surprised by people coming up behind them. https://www.ranker.com/list/things-deaf-people-have-to-deal-with/nathan-gibson

Solution

If deaf people could be discreetly be alerted of people approaching them from behind they would be startled less often.

Proof of Concept

An Arduino (in this case a Sparkfun RedBoard Edge) connected to a human sensor to detect humans, a motion sensor to know when the person wearing the device is moving (to ignore humans while in motion to prevent false positives), and a vibration motor to silently alert the wearer of the device that someone is coming. By putting this all in a small case that clips to the back of someone’s belt, it should provide some warning of approaching humans.

Basic system diagram for Haptic Human Sensor
Basic system diagram for Haptic Human Sensor
Haptic Human Sensor Physical Layout
Haptic Human Sensor Physical Layout

Arduino sketch of how the logic would flow.

Igoe’s List + Descendant

Igoe’s List

Overall I can get behind the idea of expanding interaction modes beyond these rather than refining them. I have to admit I’m rather partial to gloves, and might be tempted to make a case for making gloves an element of something a bit more ambitious… we’ll see how that goes.

A couple of things came to mind when scrolling down this list that others might be interested in.

Video mirror / mechanical pixels: https://breakfastny.com/brixels

gloves, gestures, and my last job: Oblong Industries + g-speak

Not from the list, but worth checking out considering our theme: Access+Ability

Descendant (Milo goes to space)

What jumped out at me most was this line:

“There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.”

While Banks (or the narrator in his story) refer to this as a hoary adage in whatever century they live, I am quite fond of this idea. There’s a lot of (overblown) talk about machines powered by AI taking all of our jobs, and perhaps wiping us out while they’re at it, but I am a bit more optimistic. I expect that machines will simply get better at extending our capabilities.

While ultimately our hero met his demise (sorry for the spoiler), his suit served him for over a century, kept him alive far longer than he has any right to have lived, and even made efforts to improve his emotional state. My goal at CMU (and beyond) is to make things that help expand people’s capabilities, and to teach machines empathy much like the suit in this story.