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functional description
- A (soft) object is custom-made fabric sac filled with soft cushion-like material and embedded with electronics. Each soft object forms a sensory-motor communication system that can exchange physiological signals and responses with other objects in the system.
- Each soft object has a small gumstix controller, that coordinates and interprets the data communication. Along with gumstix controller, there are several small circuits that control embedded transducers - which include be light emmisive array(s) and vibrating motors - and that are mounted on individual circuit boards, called ¡®islands¡¯. These ¡®islands¡¯ interact with the gumstix unit via a Personal Area Network, or PAN, constructed using Bluetooth technology.
- Connections that cannot be made wirelessly are made using conductive fabric ¡®wires¡¯ which are composed of a transparent directionally conductive fabric contained in a non-conductive fabric or sewn directly into the cushion to form portions of the cushion itself.
- There is also a pressure-sensitive pad area, constructed of the conductive fabric wires, connected to one of the gumstix controller, to provide touch-based gesture data.
- The gumstix has an RFID sensor that is used to identify nearby soft objects via small tags embedded within each soft object.
- This signal is conveyed to the gumstix via the encoder, where it is analyzed and then transmitted to a central system, along with information on which (soft) objects are near to this soft-object as well as any gestures reported from the pressure-sensitive pad.
- The central system routes the analyzed signals to other (soft) objects, based on the ¡®neighbourhood¡¯ information that has been gathered. At the same time, the touch signals from groups of soft-objects are gathered together and analyzed; movement data can also be displayed on each soft-object as a pattern of light using special light-emissive fibres controlled by the gumstix. The Gumstix also activates vibrating motors, using their Bluetooth ¡®islands¡¯, when the gesture matches their criteria.
- The central system converts the data obtained from the cushions - the physiological data, the RFID data and the pressure pad data - into a visible and audible representation of the state of the installation space and its participants. A video projection system and multiple speakers are used to convey this representation to the participants within the space.
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