My reading concerns a project by Daniela Rosner and Kimiko Ryokai that attempts to weave something of the process of making a handcrafted object such as a knit into the fabric of the knit itself. More specifically, Rosner and Ryokai wants to weave the memories in the form of audio, visual as well as textual recordings into the pattern of the knit. In some ways, what Rosner and Ryokai has done is to see the knitted yarn as a linear temporal strand, a timeline upon which experiences can be embedded into.

The system setup

Called Spyn, the project employs a rotary encoder attached to the yarn basket, which tracks the amount of yarn being used. The yarn has been preprinted with dots of infrared ink spaced regularly apart. As the knitter knits, the rotary encoder tracks the number of dots pulled through per unit measure of yarn. The dots also provide a kind of trackable resolution onto the knitted surface. A IR enabled camera captures video, image and audio, which are stored in the core computing system attached to the rotary encoder. This system also stores data that is automatically collected, such as GPS.

How it performed

Each knitting session involved semi-structured interviews, a first-used trial in which the knitters familiarize themselves with the system, and a knitting session where the knitters make something. The users are also moved around from location to location to observe mobile knitting and collect location data points.

Some users collect data in a diaristic manner, using the sensors to record the lengthy knit process over a given length of time, using photographs. Another used Spyn to make connections between two disparate things, between baked cookies and a knitted scarf.

The data that is recorded onto the knit is accessed via a touchscreen, which displays a photographed image of the knit upon which points of data are highlighted. When the user touches these points with his/her finger, the specific recordings are brought up.

Additional Readings

Daniela K. Rosner. Mediated crafts: digital practices around creative handwork. CHI EA ’10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. (http://bit.ly/sU67fK)

Daniela K. Rosner & Kimiko Ryokai. Reflections on craft: probing the creative process of everyday knitters. C&C ’09 Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition. (http://bit.ly/sqjYpC)

Powerpoint and PDF links

PDF (http://www.flipdrive.com/file/211d251832cdf37171127fd7d001.pdf)

PPT (http://www.flipdrive.com/file/06a0830ceabc5b82a53fb3b3cdc.pptx)

Click the images:

Safety

Composition / Stability of the Composites

poly(vinylacetate) (PVAc) and

poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)

CB/PBMA composites

(Carbon Black/ monomer, butyl methacrylate (BMA),

initiator, benzoyl peroxide (BPO)

Carbon black filled polymer composite sensing materials are prepared by melt-mixing or solution-mixing. This process is potentially toxic.

Carbon Black- Cabot Safety, Health, & Environmental Information

USE- 90% of carbon black is used in rubber applications, 9% as a pigment, and the remaining 1% as an essential ingredient in hundreds of diverse applications.

Fire- Carbon blacks in the powder or pellet form burn slowly (smolder) and sustain combustion that may not be visible as flames or smoke. t. Combustion gases generated during smoldering include carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and oxides of sulfur.

There has been no recorded industry experience to suggest that carbon black dust concentrations pose an explosion hazard . Under certain circumstances, however, it may be possible for smoldering carbon black to produce a sufficient concentration of combustible gases

Carbon black dust may be small enough to penetrate electrical boxes and other electrical devices, possibly creating electrical hazards resulting in equipment failure. Electrical devices that may be exposed to carbon black dust should be tightly sealed or purged with clean air, periodically inspected, and cleaned, as required.

Some grades of carbon black may be less electrically conductive, permitting a build-up of static energy during handling. Grounding of equipment and conveying systems may be required under certain conditions.

INHALATION- Carbon black dust spreads easily in air through virtually any air current or movement

Carbon black is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a Group 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans). Studies have demonstrated that regular exposure to carbon black and other poorly soluble particles may play a role in declining lung capacity

HUMAN STUDIES- The health effects of carbon black exposure have been studied in the United States and Western

Europe for over 60 years. These studies indicate no evidence of significant clinical health effects due to occupational exposure

Test Organic Vapors

Use- It is found that the effect of swelling on the composite’s conductivity notably depends on the organic solvent nature, namely, at least one polymer in the composites should be capable of absorbing the organic solvent vapor by a dissolution

process.

Test Solvents -

cyclohexane, carbon tetrachloride, methyl methacrylate, styrene, ethyl acetate, benzene, toluene, chloroform, dichloromethane, 1,2-dichloroethane, tetrahydrofuran, acetone, pyridine and methanol,were reagent of grades and used as received. All of these can be volatile.

Organic Vapors

The safety of organic vapors being tested is dependent on what concentrations one is testing for.

Possibility of Future Application

Health and security

- The detection of dangerous and harmful bacteria

- The quality control of food products as it could be conveniently placed in food packaging to clearly indicate when food has started to rot.

- Warn of the presence of natural gas, for those who had anosmia or a weak sense of smell.

- A technology of Electronic Nose may someday change late diagnosis.

A smell print of the breath is made a computer program matches that smell print with molecules in the breath associated with lung cancer. This allowed doctors to predict who had lung cancer and who did not.

Watch the video here:

Electronic Nose

Crime Prevention and Security

- The ability to detect odourless chemicals makes it ideal for use in the police force, such as the ability to detect drug odours despite other airborne odours capable of confusing police dogs.

- It may also be used as a bomb detection method in airports.

- For identification of volatile organic compounds in air, water and soil samples.

- For environmental protection.

Building an Electronic-Nose

Watch the video to find out how the e-nose works  http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10128

Nurturing Natural Sensors Kuznetsov, S., Odom, W., Pierce, J., and Paulos, E. Nurturing natural sensors. In Proceedings of the Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), ACM Press (2011), 227-236.

Ways of Sensing

This paper is not really about sensors at all, at least not what we think of when we think about sensors: electronic that sip temperature, pressure, motion, and light from the environment. “Nurturing Natural Sensors” is about an approach to sensing in general, one which brings a novel perspective on what it means to gather information from an environment. It considers the work of experienced gardeners, beekeepers, aquarists, and others, examining the ways in which they monitor their environments and maintain information about, say, their aquariums and beehives. It discusses the complex relationship that people have with sensing technologies, and the ways in which they use their own ‘natural’ senses, as well as those indicators in nature, to understand what’s going on. This is ‘natural’ in two valences: first, what does it mean to be a natural sensor, and what kind of holistic sensing can we extract from the natural environment?

You are a ‘natural’ sensor

Lets begin with a question: how do we, people, sense our environment? Examine one case: imagine stepping into a crowded cafeteria, say, the stylish one on the 5^th floor of the Media Lab. An alien researcher surprises you with a question, “Quick! What temperature is it in here?” You take a quick look around; most people have their coats off, a few are wearing sweaters, some are drinking coffee. A fellow is speaking loudly, he’s in shirt-sleeves. The air against your own skin feels comfortable. You guess 67 degrees. The alien researcher is astonished. He examines his fancy gizmo. You’re just about on the button. How?

You have compiled a set of instantaneous measurements—the amount of clothing people are wearing, the liquid state of water, the absence of vapor puffing from open mouths—and given an accurate estimate based on your experience. It’s easy. We all do it every day.

This is how we sense our environments and for a digital sensor, it’s a very difficult thing to do. We make use of our perception in a broad, holistic way, stitching together observation, experience, and our own ‘five’ senses, to come to rapid and (usually) accurate conclusions. This is very different than the way in which digital sensors work.

You could, of course, have turned to the wall-mounted thermostat and gotten an exact temperature reading (68 degrees), but you wouldn’t do that—and you don’t have to. We typically rely on our experience over technologies—unless, perhaps, you notice something deeply unusual. Perhaps everyone is wearing a ski-jacket and coffee spitting from the machine tinkled into ice as it hit the bottom of the mug—something absolutely counter to all of your cafeteria-related experience.

What temperature is it inside? Freezing!

Temperature, of course, is relatively trivial. Measuring it is something that we all have a lot of experience doing. Not so, with, say, the health of an aquatic environment, or the behavior of bees.

In ‘Nurturing Natural Sensors,’ researchers spoke with farmers, zookeepers, beekeepers, and others, who make complex judgments about natural systems. The participants gauged the health of an ecosystem by integrating information from many sources; their own observations, their long-time experience, and of course, their senses. They work like us, gauging the temperature of the cafeteria, filtering many indicators through their experience, and arriving at a conclusion. These indicators, or “biomarkers,” come from the natural world itself.

Biomarkers

Telling the temperature in the room by looking at people’s clothing is easy. We’re all experienced at doing exactly that. What about in other contexts? How would you gauge the conditions in an aquarium? The health of a beehive? What does a cold fish look like? All natural systems have biomarkers that relay information about their condition as long as you know where to look. This is where experience, education, and close observation are important.

In ‘Nurturing Natural Sensors’, the aquarist observes the color of the water in a tank, and deduces the corresponding environmental conditions: “I can look at this water and tell that the ozone system hasn’t been working for two weeks on this…because it’s green.”

Sweet Fishtank

This is a one-to-one biomarker. Green water in the fish tank means that there is an ozone deficiency. Such a condition, of course, could also be confirmed using a conventional sensor—and perhaps might be, later, to get a better sense of the particular situation. The canary in a coal mine, of course, is an example of a one-to-one biomarker. Miners, working in hazardous conditions, would use a canary’s behavior to gauge the relative safety. The birds, being more sensitive, would become sick before methane and carbon monoxide affected the miners themselves. This is a classic example of an ‘animal sentinel’, in which a more sensitive organism’s reactions are leveraged to expand our own.

Canary in a Coal Mine

Other biomarkers are more ambiguous but no less informative. Fish that are ‘sliming’ heavily are a sign that something is amiss, “it could be water quality…a parasite.” This is a one-to-many biomarker. One indicator could have many different causes. Integrating many such indicators, observers can draw broad conclusions about an entire ecosystem: a beekeeper observes the amount and color of nectar that bees return with, drawing conclusions about drought or “when the first flowers are blooming in the spring.”

Of course, participants in the study do not depend on their observations alone, and digital sensors augment their observations and guide them, particularly in moments of uncertainty or when more accurate information is needed. Their relationship with those tools, though, is not simple. The researchers observed that “over time, participants developed a ‘zen feel’ for the complex processes in their environment.” Participants were able “readers” of their respective ecosystems, synthesizing broad conclusions about its overall health from subtle cues. This process points to a different way of thinking about sensor systems, and the ways in which people use them.

Natural Sensor Systems

In “Nurturing Natural Sensors,” the researchers propose a different way of thinking about sensor systems. The technologists’ approach, they argue, is too limited in scope, excluding “living organisms and traditional tools” that could have a valuable place in a sensory framework. A great deal of sensing technology is focused on automating routine tasks and making human oversight unnecessary. No one would argue that this is not useful, but the researchers argue that this kind of focus overlooks a great deal of opportunity in the research space: sensor networks could be constructed to work much more like people do, “integrating inputs from plants, insects, and animals along with analog tools and digital sensors into holistic representations of the environment.” The technological problems of incorporating a canary (as opposed to a chemical sensor) into a sensing system aside, this opens the door to a new set of considerations:

• How do sensors affect the ways people interact and experience environments?
• What kind of learning and understanding do these interactions promote?
• How can natural organisms ‘output’ be integrated into a sensor network?
• What is the human role in a responsive sensor network? Is there one?
• Does ‘smart’ technology make us smarter?
• How do we encourage “human awareness, reflection, and wonderment about our living world.”

Other Research

“Nurturing Natural Sensors” was published just over a month ago, in September at Ubicomp 2011—and it explores a relatively theoretical space. The most interesting and relevant reading is Paul Dourish’s Implications for Design. Other interesting, if tangentially reading is W. Willet et al.., Common Sense Community: Scaffolding Mobile Sensing and Analysis for Novice Users, and Y. Rogers et al., Ambient Wood: Designing New Forms of Digital Augmentation for Learning Outdoors.

Fiber optic bend sensors blend the powerful transmission properties of optical fibers with multiple sensing capabilities. Through detectable changes in the longitudinal bend of the fiber shaft, these sensors can track changes in strain, pressure, and more—and can sense multiple properties at once in their multi-modal form. Their small size and ability to work without electronic power at the remote location make them useful in many applications.

The optical fibers themselves may be sensors (“intrinsic” sensors), or the sensor may be used to connect other (non-fiber-optic) sensors to other systems (“extrinsic” sensors). A particularly distinct advantage of the fiber optic form is its capacity to provide distributed sensing over distance, up to one meter.

I. Fiber Optics

Fiber optic cables transmit signals by light pulses moving along hair-thin shafts of glass, or plastic:

Fiber optic cables are used for all kinds of signal transmissions in daily life—internet, telephone lines, and so on—because of its superior speed and power, its clean signal, and lower cost than that of copper wire electrical systems. Cables may be single or multi-modal form:

II. Optical fibers as bend sensors:

Fiber optic sensors measure four different modulations to their optical signals: intensity, polarization, phase, and frequency. Intensity monitoring is the easiest to set up and measure by bend sensors; the sensors register changes in modulation and intensity by a critical bend angle (via Snell’s Law) that causes light to be refracted away from the core rather than reflected back into it. As a result, bend sensors can measure a number of changes registered by the bend such as curvature or soil deformation.

Sensors are especially powerful in their multi-modal form enhanced by Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)—a technique that “grates” on the core cladding material to multiply the rate and intensity of this light refraction. Additional paper on this topic: Implementation of vectorial bend sensors using long-period gratings UV-inscribed in special-shape fibers. However, this technology is costly (the glass and the grating process). Our assigned paper (see the Assignments page) examines a new plastic fiber-optics bend sensor that measures intensity reliably and at lower cost; this innovation seems to promise more widespread use of fiber-optic bend sensors in construction and engineering projects.

III. Where to acquire:

Allied LLC has a number of sensors available for retail customers.

II. Applications:

Relevant to our course, PHOSFOS uses optical bend sensors in projects integrated into flexible or stretchable skins:

These skins easily measure pressure, strain, and deformation; they have advantages over other e-skins because of their portability and distributed sensing over greater distances. Wearable sensors could be upgraded in power and distance with fiber optic technologies.

Medical engineering, aerospace and maritime technologies, automotive and industrial uses. The first video below shows a shape-sensing needle for medical engineering projects; the second video demonstrates the use of FBG for powerful sensing capacities, discussed above: