Head Monster from kuanjuwu on Vimeo.

0.Introduction
“LIVES IN MY HEAD. IT CONSISTS OF MY WILL.
WHEN IT EATS SOMETHING, I HAVE A FEELING.
SOMETIMES HAPPY, SOMETIMES SAD.
SOMETIMES SWEET, SOMETIMES FUCK.
IT IS HARD TO CONTROL MY FEELING, JUST LIKE
TO CONTROLL THE HEAD MONSTER.”

Head Monster is an interactive game that the user uses a face shape control panel to drive a head like small robot. When the robot hit an object (projection), it will eat the object, and the face will change. Some objects represent good some mean bad. We earn points by eating those good objects and get minus point by eating bad objects. In the limited time the user need to gain the points as high as possible.

1.Motivation
The idea of creating a small creature that has simple behavior (follows simple rule) came to my mind at the first time. In many movies like AVATAR or Princess Mononoke we can find a character that is small and white and represents the spirit of pureness. Inspired by Valentino Braitenberg’s VEHICLES I started building simple moving robots that follow people.

2.Exploration
To Make a Braitenberg Vehicle I tried different approaches:

(Two servo motors and two light sensors hook up with Arduino)

(Two DC motors and two light sensor with a handmade Arduino board)

(Two light sensors and two pager motors connected with transistor. No Arduino )

To control these people following robots I was thinking using projector from top projects bright white spot on the floor which enable robots to follow with. A camera from top captures the image of player and find the position, and then projects white circles that are flocking around.

This idea fail because:
1. Robots are too slow to chase the white spots.
2. Player’s shadow might block the light.
3. The light environment has many noise which causes randomness of robots.
At this point I changed the idea:
Instead of making robots follow light spots, I make the white spots (projection) follow a robot. And here is the basic structure of HEAD MONSTER:
Using a IR-camera from the top we can find the position of IR emitter embedded robot and project image on the robot.The robot is made by a small RC vehicle which controlled by a four tilt sensors embedded controller.

4.Implementation

ROBOT:

(The form of head monster. Drawn in Alias, cut by CNC milling machine.)

(Vacuum forming the head shape foam, the upper part is embedded with an IR emitter)
(The lower part has a four wheel robot inside)

(Hacked radio controller. Four tilt sensors control four directions of movement)

IR CAMERA:

(Hacked PS3 Eye, the IR filter has been taken off. Instruction: http://www.peauproductions.blogspot.com/)

INTERFACE:
Programmed in Openframeworks.


(When the small face moves cross over an object, the score and the big face change)

5.Final Thought
There are many challenges of controlling small robots that following people, which makes me think of: It is so hard to 100% control the robot. What if we abandon the right of control and let the randomness of the physical world (the ambient light, the form of robot, sensors, motors…) drives the robot, the robot might become more vivid. Although the original idea was not success, we learned the experience from this exploration.