Dhruv Adhia – Hello Universe

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.

Bridging Intellect and Spirituality

// May 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Thirdimension

“Every breath is a new birth” – An interesting thought I came across while I was discussing about smile with a professor named Jagdeesh Arya. His research mainly lies into the field of Quantum Mathematics.

I often have interesting conversation with him as I too am inclined towards Maths from different dimensions. In short, we see math everywhere . Today’s topic was to see Math in a smile , yes a smile! We were wondering what are the conditions for optimizing smile in our life?

Think of three things
1) We don’t know if we are going to have next breath
2) Hence, Every breath is giving new life – A new birth in itself
3) As we celebrate our birthdays and as every breath is a new birth = Celebrate with every breath

During my 3rd term of Masters, I had proposed P_E_A_C_E proposal to the university where I study, to carry out research and development in the field of breathing and creating tangible experience out of it. It was mainly targeted towards those people who wants to have unique inner experiences while doing yoga. To help them do creative meditation while controlling ambience just through their breathe.

For more information, you can download the proposal here.

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?

Biomimicry, ecology media and organic media

// May 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // antarikShamM, Thirdimension

There are flood of all these devices in which information is provided just on time, just on need and in a seamless manner with natural gestures. There is yet something to be found in those devices. Its something I experience while meditating 4:30 A.M. in the morning, while playing physical(real) sport, while hiking, while biking, while being with nature. What is that natural media offers and that digital media yet does not offer?

I think possible solutions lie in the field of biomimicry, ecology media and organic media. The last one is something which came off the top of my mind after years of practice of meditation and pranayama. The difference between digital interactions and natural interactions that I find most of the time are

Digital Interactions provides addictiveness in the environment. I can anticipate about what I need, the information, the people, the color and so on.

On the other hand Natural interactions takes time and effort to gain some result. The result is the most unique experience. Its not the addictive one but the unique experience.

So should digital interactions involve unique experiences? I think the answer is certainly yes. Because after all we, our body is made up of organic material and for us to interact fluidly, more organically the interactions should be more natural over time. They should involve some effort, some area of unknowings, some mystery. The humaness of technology.

After all we all question, what is the mystery behind the universe? and that very question drives us forward to look out for the mystery and it reveals over time.

In short, nature is inspiration not only in terms of physical biomimcing but also in terms of process, design and inner engineering.