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Re: AID: AID and the Orpheus Filter

From: Jeff Mann   jeffjeffmann.com
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 09:35:18 -0700

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Steven Wood wrote:

> The proposed groupings of whiskers that hang from the fabric of
> interconnected parts behave much like cilia.  Each whisker will be
> simultaneously a sensing device and an actuator.  When the whisker
> senses contact, subtle waves of motion propagate (using small motors at
> the follicles) through the group.
> 
> The physical side of the installation is quite mature through two
> previous iterations.  We are at the point of needing to settle on a
> microprocessor platform to control the whiskers.  The demands of the
> project on the scale of a single node are very simple: sense when a
> whisker has been contacted, activate nearby motor circuits according to
> some algorithm.  The challenge is the complexity of scale:  We need
> control of somewhere between 100-200 whiskers in order to generate the
> desired effect, implying that a series of controllers need to be somehow
> together somehow.

Could you clarify a little, the structure that you're describing? How 
many whiskers are in a group/node? You say you need to control 100-200 
whiskers, is that in total, or per node?

Let me assume for a moment that there are, say, eight whiskers per node, 
and so about twenty nodes. Any whisker that is touched, would cause 
"subtle waves of motion to propagate through the group", i.e. in itself 
and the other seven whiskers in its group/node. Is that about right?

But why, then, do the nodes need to talk to each other? Or do you want 
the motion to propagate through all the nodes, not just within each 
grouping? If so, how do you imagine that working?

<Jeff

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