Media Lab Projects
Rover@Home allows geographically separated dogs and humans to use to interact with each other over the Internet. Rover@Home builds upon a well-established dog training technique known as clicker training which associates the sound of a toy clicker with a food reward to rapidly teach a dog innovative and exciting new tricks. Initial field tests indicate Rover@Home is rewarding to both dog and human participants.
Rover@Home was featured on the October 16 episode of Scientific American Frontiers, hosted by Alan Alda
Lumi-Touch are a pair of linked picture frames that provide continuous ambient social interaction. When one picture frame is squeezed, the other picture frame, located arbitrarily far away, lights up. The picture frames are connected over the Internet, and allow emotional background social interaction, without the cognitive load and distraction of a phone call or online chat.
Serial TrHacking is an exploration of the African Grey Parrot's ability to learn how motions on a controller correspond to motions of various food dispensers. We hope to show these birds can successfully evaluate novel sequences of stimuli without any retraining. For Serial TrHacking I focused on the design of the experimental apparatus.
InterPet Explorer is software for parrots. It's in its very early stages, and is currently a "smart-perch" hardware platform providing the most basic interface a parrot might use to interact with a computer. A software framework consisting of various media viewers has been written for the birds. Finding software that is compelling to these birds is our ongoing challenge.
Trial by Eire was created by the Synthetic Characters team for the opening of the Media Lab Europe (MLE) in Dublin Ireland of July 2000. In Trail by Eire you are a Shepard who give voice commands to your trusty dog in an effort to herd a flock of sheep from one of a pasture to the other. I joined the project in the final weeks as an extra hand on deck to write last minute code (such as sound) and bug fixes.
My initial research effort was to understand canine olfaction for the purpose of recreating it in a synthetic environment.
Frustration with Javacomm led to the creation of Simple Serial. It's a very simple means to interact with the serial port on a Windows machine using Java.
If you're new to PIC chips and Java, and just "want something to work", this is for you.
Change does not always come easily. My guide to new people is aimed ease the transition into Media Lab life.