TalkyThings

Vision

How would our interaction with day-to-day objects change if there was a dialogue in between bodies, objects, and spaces, and what is happening around them, so they can “communicate” with us by reacting and adapting accordingly.

Everyday objects have certain characteristics that suit our needs when we have to use them, but are not the best in other contexts.

Mapping The Invisible

We envision devices which could map parameters invisible for us (temperature, velocity, pH level, humidity, applied stress). Many things happen in the world out of our “field of view.” What if our devices could respond to them, adapting themselves to make our lives easier?

These devices would, then, respond to physical conditions, to interactions, to different contexts — they would “talk” to us in many different contexts, informing and adapting themselves in function of invisible properties of our surroundings.

Technology

Along these lines, we have built different prototypes which rely on simple mechanisms and systems from soft-robotics to allow our device to morph in between different stages.

Design — The Dining Experience

To provide an specific example of our vision, we chose the context daily objects that exist in any kitchen. Food and eating utensils are static. Added dynamic element for flexibility of use of one of the most ubiquitous devices used in everyday life.

A bowl, for instance, could activate when we put food on it, increase its containing volume depending on how much food you put on it, or optimize its shape for easier washing and storage whenever it is being washed. The bowl, in this case, would be a fellow traveler in our dining experience.

As a result, we designed a 3-state device that morphs from a high-packing-factor polygonal shape to a plate, and to a bowl.

Actuation could happen in many different ways. In the context of the kitchen, we found that passive actuators[1], which respond to different levels of pH (by shrinking when exposed to high pH levels and expanding when exposed to low pH levels) could allow our device to shrink and automatically go on “storage” configuration when applying soup on it (washing).

pH-responsive film by Viirj Kan

Team: Abdulla Alhajri, Lia Bogoev, Amy Loomis, Nono Martínez Alonso (@nonoesp)
Date: December 8, 2015

We are all busy. We are definitely doing something wrong.

We have more things to do today than we could do in a whole week. We seem to be in a quest to be connected better, but we forget we should be spending time outside the screen.

Machines are, supposely, getting more and more intelligent to do things we used to do before, but why do we seem to be spending the same amount of hours in front of a computer.

Aside from what computers do for us, there are creative tasks we need to do on our own. What if we could work using analog interfaces, so we don’t have to spend as much time as we spend now looking at a screen.

Around this concept, I would like to share a few ideas that would, in some way or another, contribute towards giving us more screen-free time.

• Link physical objects to CAD elements or parameters.
• A paper grid that establish a cartesian three dimensional space where you can place geometries that serve as input in a digital model.
• Dots that represent a polyline and get also represented in CAD.
• An outline or wireframe that gets interpreted as a structure and gets animated as it would react to gravity. (You draw a simple structure and a projection or a simulation of its deflection is shown.).
• Physical balls that you can actually move around the table.

In case you are intriged, you can take a look at my site at nono.ma — I write about design, code, and minimalism.

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Abstract.

How would our interaction with day-to-day objects change if there was a dialogue in between bodies, objects, and spaces, and what is happening around them, so they can “communicate” with us by reacting and adapting accordingly.

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Everywhere, we find bodies, objects, and spaces surrounding us which have a solid or rigid state. Some of them, as an intrinsic property. The firm and stable shape of these elements—built in their nature, either artificially (i.e. a table) or naturally (i.e. an egg)—is, in many cases, a trade-off.

Yes, everyday objects, such as a table or a phone, are rigid in order to improve the way we interact with them. Yet, we encounter situations on a daily basis in which we wish those elements were not that rigid after all. When we pass by and hit the corner of a table, the pain caused is amplified due to its rigidity, as if the table was punishing you for not being careful and noticing it. When we drop our phone, its solid state, together with its flimsiness, increases the probabilities for it to break, as if it wanted to break because we were not careful enough.

Understanding this as a continuous barrier in our lives to interact with bodies, objects, and spaces, we propose an improvement to our daily interaction with them—a dialogue between day-to-day objects and us. This is, a way to inform an element on how we are using it: Are we touching it? Did we drop it? Is is free-falling? Is something going to collide with it?

Using haptic feedback, jamming, or motion detection, objects can be aware of what is happening to—and around—them, and respond accordingly¹. Along the vision of Radical Atoms², materials can be intelligent and, for instance, they could pump or suck air from their inside , in order to adapt themselves to whatever consistency the current environment requires¹.

The corner of a table or the hard edge any surface—which softens right before you hit it—establishes a direct dialogue with you, it knows what you are doing and reacts to your actions, adapting its hardness as you are passing by.

A surface that softens when an object is free-falling to it, or an element which adapts its envelope while free-falling, would react to help us, as if an invisible entity was trying to make our life easier.

Things wouldn’t break, or at least, not as often as they currently do. Materials would be capable of “talking,” capable of communicating with us using a new language in order to let us know they are aware that we are here.

This is very interesting, makes me think of a sort of “internet of things with shape / stiffness change”. Fantastic use of GIF’s and contrast here, really cool. In terms of the talking to us, check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect.