Author Archives: Akshay Goyal

Project 1 :: Grava (More Updates Due)

Overview::

Grava is an adaptive chair that responds to the physical presence of the person sitting on it . It is based in generative design methods that utilizes material behavior based computation to allow for kinetic transformations as a passive effect.

The project would primarily investigate material behaviors and explore the possibility of using complaint mechanism within the framework of animating built environments.

Inspiration & Key Motivation

The prototype borrows from Frank Herbert’s ‘Chairdogs’ as described in “The Tactful Saboteur (1964)” and “Whipping Star (1970)”. The ChairDog as the name implies a hybrid between a pet dog and a lounge chair. The chair fits to the user and senses the users mood, and like a massage chair calms and makes the user comfortable. In Herbert’s universe the ChairDog is described in multiple stories as a ubiquitous object with multiple functional and responsive attributes :

The room’s standard model chairDogs had been well trained to comfort their masters, McKie noted. One of them nudged him behind the knees until he dropped his bag and took a reluctant seat. The chairdog began massaging his back. Obviously it had been instructed to make him comfortable while someone was summoned…
He indicated a chairdog against the wall to his right, snapped his fingers. The semi-sentient artifact glided to a position behind McKie. “Please be seated.”
McKie, his caution re alerted by Bolin’s reference to “uninhibited conversation,” sank into the chairdog, patting it until it assumed the contours he wanted.

One of the interesting attribute was that Herbert thought of the ChairDogs not as artifacts with multiple actuators but thought of them almost as if they had lifelike responsive qualities and moved without the use of motors or actuators.
The intention of embedding responsive attributes in our physical environments is a theme that has been used by a number of ther science fiction authors. J.G. Ballard concept of psychotropic house was based on a physical environment constructed using a new form of material plastex (a combination of plaster and latex) allowing for transformation and control of the interal shape of the house. The notion of physical objects physically adjusting and responding to humans can have numerous implications in the way living environments are designed and constructed.

…As I stepped forward, it jerked away, almost in alarm, the entrance retracting and sending a low shudder through the rest of the spheres……It’s always interesting to watch a psychotropic house try to adjust itself to strangers, ………

– From The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, by J.G. Ballard.

Also Clifford Simak’s self adjusting furniture was an imposratant insoiration , with a direct impact on how Grava was conceived and designed.

The self-adjusting furniture, bought at a time when the management had considered throwing the hostelry open to the alien trade, had been out of date twenty years ago. But it still was there. It had been repainted, in soft and genteel pastels, its self-adjustment features still confined to human forms.

-From First He Died (Time and Again), by Clifford Simak.

Function:

The chair responds to the users weight and encloses the user with a soft shell when the user sits on it. It is intended to function as a personal ‘petting’ space , where the user can think and contemplate without external distraction. This privacy/ contemplation pod can be designed to respond and operate only to specific individuals based on weight calibration.

Other possible functions for this system can include
1. As a Gaming Chair with a mounted head display and suspended seating zone to augment the gaming experience .
2. Medical Applications – With the appendages having embedded body scanners
3. Super Massage Chair- integrate pneumatic appendages !
Technology Innovation

The chair is based on a process of topology optimization based complaint mechanism design . Complaint mechanisms are flexible mechanisms that can transfer input forces (such as the weight of a person sitting on the chair) at some other point to perform some usable output action (such as generating a sinusoidal motion on the chair surface ).

A system to design such mechanisms was developed in the Rhino3D/Grasshopper environment using a custom C# script . The process consists of the following steps :

1. Input two dimensional design space boundary
2. Define loads, supports and intended transformation sequences.
3. Generate topology optimization based complaint mechanism .
4. Extract contours based on stiffness gradients.
5. Define flexure hinges and rigid body material in the result.
6. Convert results for fabrication .

An interesting outcome of this process is the visual quality of the results. The skeletal outcome is very organic and reminds me of the HR Geiger’s designs or the chair that was designed for the Space Jockey

Project 2 :: Ivyoid (More Updates Due)

Plantroid is augmented interactive plant pet developed for indoor environments. It is inspired by the the fictional scenario of artificial pets based in epidermits (as proposed by Stuart Karten) in Antonelli’s story “The Design Doyenne Defeats the Dullness”. Its basic setup consists of a living plant that is augmented by a robotic shell. The shell can sense the plants needs (moisture , sun , nutrient levels) and enable communication between the human owner and the plant. The Plantroid autonomously navigates around the house of its owner seeking areas with sunlight to perch in . They are low maintenance pets, seeking the owner’s attention when they need water or nutrients. They have artificial behaviors encoded in their interaction with the human owner such as swirling around with joy when they get the owners attention , or using social media to communicate their needs to the owner.

I developed a quick prototype ( the ‘deadliest’ weapon in a designers toolkit to paraphrase Antonelleii :)) and developed a light seeking robotic chassis on which a plant pod is mounted . Integrating a plant -need sensor into the equation now ( soil moisture , lux levels etc)

The Hymn of Ordeal, No. 23 By Rhiannon Rasmussen

The Hymn of Ordeal, No. 23

Rhiannon Rasmussen
The story describes a world that has was attacked by an extraterrestrial civilization. Humanity has mustered together and mounted a counter attack with Shrikes . Shrikes are machinic entities powered by human entities. But the organic matter that powers the shrikes is devoid of any connection with the original human form , the remnants of which lie in a suspended chamber as mass of muscles and innards.

In the story the narrators brother has volunteered to become a shrike and she describes the agony that she faces by the loss of her brother’s humaneness. The shrikes are successful in the attack and defeat the enemy , indulging in a genocide . They return after years of battle along with the attackers spaceships. The narrator searches for her brother but all the shrikes look the same in the sky . The narrator understands that her brother is lost forever.
Object proposal

This made me think of all the flying apparatus mounted on humans in science fiction. Mostly it consists of some sort of wings with propulsion jets.
My idea was to think of a back mounted flying device that was based in retractable rotor wings . Essentially a mount on helicopter device .
The advantages over the other systems are numerous. Apart from lower threshold for take off and landing, it would also allow for the person to hover in mid air. Some of the existing prototypes have two rotary shafts . The back mounted version proposes only one. A quick sketch of the proposal (and some fun with the Superman takeoff pose )

Petty Objects II – Plantroid

Cautionary-Visions01-740x450

“The story”
The day the plants walked away

Cloris was anxious . Flora had now been missing since 48 hours. Her parents had informed the CAIO unit. The ‘counter artificially intelligent objects’ unit or ‘kai-O’ as they were called was an elite paramilitary unit trained to detect and capture rogue AI objects . What happened to the captured AI objects was unknown. Some say there was a massive Kai-O facility in New Mexico where these objects were studied. Some objects remained untraceable. Cloris hoped that Flora would not get into the hands of the CAIO unit. Flora had last got in touch with Cloris on her Mind Dust feed yesterday. Apart from her usual banter about how she was feeling thirty and needed watering , she had also mentioned a message from another epidermits pet . Cloris has assumed it to be another epidermits spam , where spammers to avoid spam filters, sent indirect spam messages to people through their personal iot stuff . She had tried checking Flora’s mind Dust feed but the message was nowhere to be found. Cloris had heard from her friend at school that there had been other incidents of epidermits plant walking away due to a bug in their operating system that made the plants leave their owners and go towards a unknown destination . Inspector Smith had streamed in at the scene and talked with Cloris’s parents an hour back . He had mentioned that the bug was because of a rouge AI that had infected Flosan’s servers . Flosan the company that had patented plant-epidermits in was working with a special unit of Kai-O . Cloris seemed to even more troubled now as she sensed something in the way that Inspector Smith described this event. He seemed to be desperately trying to underplay this bug as somthing ‘routine’. It was dark outside . Cloris peeped outside of the window half expecting Flora to be waiting at the porch. She saw lights . The lights were same as those from Flora’s eye sockets . But there were hundreds of them . All of them seemed to be heading somewhere . Something was wrong. Something big was happening.

TopoChair v.2

Inspiration
The prototype borrows from Frank Herbert’s idea of a ChairDog. In Herbert’s universe the ChairDog is described in multiple stories as a ubiquitous object with multiple functional and responsive attributes :

The room’s standard model chairDogs had been well trained to comfort their masters, McKie noted. One of them nudged him behind the knees until he dropped his bag and took a reluctant seat. The chairdog began massaging his back. Obviously it had been instructed to make him comfortable while someone was summoned…
He indicated a chairdog against the wall to his right, snapped his fingers. The semi-sentient artifact glided to a position behind McKie. “Please be seated.”
McKie, his caution re alerted by Bolin’s reference to “uninhibited conversation,” sank into the chairdog, patting it until it assumed the contours he wanted.

Description

* Side note
I have been thinking of the more subversive applications of such a product . One of the biggest application areas could be in the Parliament/ Legislative Houses where rogue politicians can be trapped in such a artifact when they have gone overboard. Imagine Trump’s chair pulling him in, during one of his hate tirades. More discussion about this in class. Reminds me of Herberts’s ‘Bedog’ and its associations with the saboteur . This is the Venus flytrap end of the spectrum .

Some of the other possible application areas are:
1. As a medical enclosure .
2. Again in a medical theme where the ends of the chair have embedded body sensors . The person inside could have a non invasive body scan
3. Sleep pod
4. Privacy pod in public areas
5. Love Seat – enclosure triggered by two people sitting on it
6. baby crib
7. Audio pod/enclosure
8. Walking beast chair
9. Massage Chair
10. Chair with musical instruments on the appendages
11. Adaptable chair based on user’s ergonomics.
12. Chair that complains if you sit too long in it.
13. Posture improving chair
General themes

Topo Chair is based on investigating material behaviors and exploring possibility of using complaint mechanism within the framework of animating built environments. Complaint mechanisms are flexible mechanisms that can transfer input forces (such as the weight of a person sitting on the chair) at some other point to perform some usable output action (such as generating a sinusoidal motion on the chair surface, massaging the person sitting on the chair ).

TopoChair is also conceptually based on the idea of ‘hylozoism’, the ancient belief that all matter has life. It seeks to question the popular science fiction imagination of the built environment of the future being largely static .
Prototype
The current prototype is at 1:5 scale with three materials systems . Polycarbonate based rigid elements , spring steel based flexure elements and polypropylene based flexible side fronds .

Next Steps

1. Work on electronic components of the product and the tweet routine
2. Improve the assembly details , side mesh details and the proportions.
3. Scale up
4. Explore behaviors ( both as a topology as well as response of the object to the user )