Dhruv Adhia – Hello Universe

Digital Monalisa – Sensification

// November 9th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, Fluid Interfaces, Nature, Networking, opencv, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension, Ubiquitous Computing

At Dsign Interactive labs, I am working on my latest creation, which we call “Monalisa.”
Past few months I worked on various computer vision related algorithms. They were to do with
color, object, tracking, gesture, emotion and speech recognition. There were various other small
algorithms like OCR, image analysis etc.

For Dsign 2.0, I am working on Monalisa software which will eventually combine all such algorithms
with Dsign Framework at the center and utilize it for practical purpose.

My personal intentions out here is not to prove that we are just evolved/programmed/tangible beings.
Its actually the other way round

I personally think that the beauty of AI lies at the application level and not at the conscious or intelligence level.

We at Dsign labs believe that we will create a dent in the universe through our approach of humanizing
interfaces that would better equip with human senses.

The project is under NDA.
But over time I will post some pics and videos as I have more freedom

Peace and lots of love,
Dhruv (Currently in love with Digital Monalisa)

Keynote presentation through Hand Gestures from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

iBot – Virtual Social Robot for iPhone/iPad/iPod

// August 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // organic media, Technology, Thirdimension, Ubiquitous Computing

We recently at Dsign Interactive Systems + SquareCube LLC worked on interactive virtual social robot.
The robot reacts to touch drag gestures on the iPhone. It also reacts to accelerometer. In a way the robot
has a sense of where you are touching it and also gravity up to certain extent.

This is what we call “Bridging Humans and Virtual Agents” or “Humanizing Technology” in simple terms

In future versions we are planning to create a concept of time and space taking it to a level of creating
a virtual world for the robot. So that it can move around and do more Human actions. And we mean to
spread awareness in human actions by making spotty behave more humanly.

Coming from India and dealing with actions, the word that penetrates my mind, body and soul is “KARMA.”
I wrote Karma algorithm to reward and punish based on the actions of the user. This way we are trying to bridge the gap
between humans and virtual bot. Also we have named the bot “Spotty”

iPad version will be released soon too.

Here is the glimpse,

Credits:
Yangos Hadjiyannas – Creative Director
Mckane Lee – Digital Consultant and Animator
Dhruv Adhia – Technical Director and Programmer

Love & Peace,
Dhruv Adhia

Organic Interaction

// June 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension

My pursuit for happiness found in nature continues. I am learning how is it connected to technology or how technology can be tied in the ways nature is? Biomimicry is already on its way. The people at biomimicry institute believe that all the problems that are technical and design challenged are already solved in nature. We just need to know how to translate them to human made technologies. This reminds me of how nature is not just “Nature”, nurturing all of us? Its a intellectual treasure. Answer to most of technical designs are already out there is what I believe too.

For example, let us consider the example of Object Oriented programming in the field of computer science. It consists of 5 things basically,

1) Classes and objects
2) Data encapsulation
3) Data Abstraction
4) Polymorphism
5) Inheritance

All of these are basically found in nature. Everything in nature is in some form of inheritance. Some might have single name but multiple forms. Considering the human body as a form of nature, look how many forms humans have? Infinite?

Also look at the way I interact with daily objects and natural life around me. Its like “I don’t have to think at all”, data abstraction isn’t it? And that’s because everything in nature is encapsulated in the form of objects which has behaviours and properties.

Though, what I wanted to discuss in this post was about what are different aspects of natural interactivity compared to that of today’s cutting edge technology.

Today’s technology, is about seamless interaction which provides information on time. Today’s technology is immersing out like mobile web. Information connected on the go.

But what about nature? For example without the help of any technology, if I plan to go for hiking or travelling across the mountain. It takes effort, adventure, thrilling moments to experience, learn, feel and understand that very interaction. Its result is gradual. Why? I don’t know why. But it reminds me that “Process” is more important than results. I also learn that smiling through struggle = Process

So let us now analyse, what did I learn from that natural interaction. I did not only learn, but also felt which was a bigger learning for me. I learnt about the process and learning about the process. I learnt Struggle is a form of smile . Isn’t that interaction worth while having?

Here is some inspiration to take,

Humanizing Technology, Part 2

// June 3rd, 2010 // 7 Comments » // opencv, organic media, Technology, Thirdimension

At my company we mostly work with wireless technologies, and by wireless we open our minds to ambient intelligence, computer vision, sensors and so forth.

Today I was performing a small experiment by connecting Unity which is a game engine, openFrameworks which combines all the opensource libraries and Arduino which is a microcontroller. I wanted to tweak animations with analog and digital sensors as input. So today I set a task of playing the animation when LDR (Light dependent resistor) has certain value. I had a threshold as a condition above and below which animation will be played and stopped respectively. In arduino I had a circuit setup with the code and it basically turned on the LED if value of analog sensor was above certain threshold. I had set the threshold to be 512. The value increased if the surroundings were darker. So basically if you place your finger on the sensor, LED will turn on and when LED turns on I wanted to play animation inside Unity.

Videos are in two parts as I had to capture both tangible and non tangible aspects of my experiment. Today I was also trying to combine smile recognition, so that is also included in the video.

Part 1

Arduino+OpenFrameworks+Unity Part 1 from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

Part 2

Arduino+openFrameworks+Unity Part 2 from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

In short the whole experiment is divided into 3 parts.
1) Arduino which serves as input in the form of digital and analog sensors
2) openFrameworks which serves as middleware like a controller between input(Arduino) and output(Unity)
- In this program it takes analog light level inputs from arduino through serial bus and passes the information to Unity. This is one of connecting arduino to Unity which can bring interesting results.
- openFrameworks is passing the center of the human face detected and is also detecting the smile.
3) Unity, which is were we would see output at least in our case at Dsign Interactive. My team consists of creative and art director, so taking advantage of all our skills we thought of integrating our interactive elements with Unity which is a good game engine for doing 3d programming. It can serve for other interactive 3d elements as well.

So now I can think of tangible interfaces to control interactive elements inside the game/animations/digital art exhibit.

This is what I vision in future of hardware and virtual elements integrated seamlessly to bring unique experience. For me the unique experience are more inspiring to create rather than addictive ones. This is one thing that I have learned from Nature. Don’t get attached, but grow with unique experiences. And I think that’s what makes us humans a technology should be mediator driving the purpose. This is in a way an example of biomimicry. A design that is inspired by nature.

Signing off, Humanizing Technology part 2. More parts will come soon.

Humanizing technology

// May 18th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // antarikShamM, opencv, organic media, Technology

At Dsign Interactive systems in Vancouver, Canada I am leading the project for the development of core product in terms of its design and implementation. The company had touchless interactive systems working in past but it was crashing. I am reimplementing the system using openFrameworks and Unity integrated with bumblebee2 camera. I have got basic connections laid out between devices and platforms. So that now I can move a 3d model with a wink of my eye. Here is a video showing detection of various parts of the face using core openCv Library.

Open Cv Face parts detection on Mac from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.

I think technology has definitely come to the point at least for some of us who understand the need of humanizing technology rather than we becoming like machines in front of machines. Its the time we want our computers to react in a human way, understanding human gestures for better communication. I would consider this as one of my first practical steps towards what I call “Organic Media“. In future, I see we have organic sensors integrated into computers which recognize the organic surroundings as well. We have been putting heavy load on software side in terms of pattern recognition and computer algorithmes. But to me I think its a fine blend between software and hardware that can lead to the balance in technology that humanizes.

Organic media – THE WAY FOR HCI

// May 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Biomimicry, organic media, Thirdimension

As I talked about Organic media in my last post, What is that organic media has to offer that HCI of today lacks? I think most of the HCI lacks HHI. HHI means Human Human Interactions. HCI brings all the wonderful interactions of providing information just in time with seamless gestures which are so easy to use by any layman.

On the other hand what it lacks is, the consequences of the interaction. What is the takeaway from the interaction? Yes information, maybe not health, maybe not inner joy.

I think of organic interactions in which interactions are answered for the inner world. I think of interactions through computer which would better help human human interactions. I think organic media will help us answer when the technology be used? is it really necessary in time?

There are many questions and its answers which I am after. Its a wonderful journey of interactions when I think of both HCI and organic media and how they are connected or how they can be?