After much thought and discussion with friends, I decided to make a project that focused on the emotion of nervousness.
The idea was to create two legs with shoes attached on them that “walk” in the same place by their attachment to two servo motors. A photoresistor would be placed such that it is able to pick up when a shadow is cast on the project and someone is getting close to it. The closer the person gets, the more nervous the legs get, and the faster they move.
I made the legs out of Popsicle sticks and connected them with wire. The shoes were made of tiny red balloons.
Once I made a working prototype, I felt the shoes needed an environment to walk in. I painted the background to represent a dark and starry night. In our world today, walking alone at night is associated with nervousness.
Through this project I learned a great about the conceptualization process of a project. If I were to do this project again, I might learn how to laser cut and create better parts for the project.
This is a video of the working project:
Fritzing of the circuit:
First of all, I thought this concept for “motorized emotions” was very unique and well executed over all. I think you did a great job especially in creating a frame for the legs such that the audience could separate out the concept from the electronics behind it. If there was any room for improvement, I think it would be 1) perhaps switching out the photoresistor for an analog IR sensor just because depending on how the light was set up in the room sometimes the person’s shadow would not necessarily fall in the right place to speed up the shoes 2) improving the aesthetics of the legs and the shoes (although in the time provided this probably was not feasible). Overall though, I think this was a very original idea, definitely represented an emotion to me, and in general a great project.
I loved it. Perhaps as mentioned above you could have used a proximity sensor enveloped in some object of fear/tension that made the legs shake. I’d also suggest making the servo rotations random and not deterministically back and forth – to bring out the true nervousness. I think the aesthetics were great, given the time allotted. Very well presented above too.
The conceptualization of the work was amazing. The mechanical motion you were able to simulate did a great job clearly conveying nervousness. The aggressive and jagged leg-shaking motion added even succeeded to add humorous quality to the overall work. If you were planning to portray a heavier and more serious atmosphere of anxiety and nervousness, like you mentioned, using cleanly-cut material using any types of electric cutters – wood cutter or laser cutters- would be necessary.