Instructor :
Jeff Feddersen
email: fed@zaftig.org
url: www.zaftig.org/pcomp

Office Hours:
Tuesdays, 1:30-3:30
Adjunct Office

Course Description:
[ H79.2301.01 ] This course expands the students' palette for physical interaction design with computational media. We look away from the limitations of the mouse, keyboard and monitor interface of today's computers, and start instead at the untapped expressive capabilities of the human body. We consider uses of the computer for more than just information retrieval and processing, and at locations other than the home or the office. The platform for the class is a microcontroller, a single-chip computer the size of a postage stamp, programmed using BASIC. The core technical concepts are digital, analog and serial input and output. Students have weekly lab exercises to build skills with the microcontroller and related tools, and three longer assignments in which they apply the principles from weekly labs in a creative application.

A note about this site vs. the pcomp homepage
The physical computing syllabus has been standardized so that the same material is covered in all sections of the course. The lab assignments and much of the supporting material are the same across all classes, and our syllabus links into the material maintained by Tom on the physical computing homepage. However, this site is specific to our class, and will contain additional information, so please begin at our syllabus so as not to miss anything.

Some Random Photos:

	CMUCam: "CMUcam is a new low-cost, low-power sensor for mobile robots. You can use CMUcam vision system to do many different kinds of on-board, real-time vision processing.  Because CMUcam uses a serial port, it can be directly interfaced to other low-power processors such as PIC chips."
	Brett Hemes' BEAM Solaroller. "While traditional approaches essentially start with a "brain," and attempt to build robots "downward" from that, BEAM robotics starts from simple reflexes, in a 'bottoms-up' approach. The majority of BEAM robots are non-computerized (although simple CPUs can be used to drive them, in a 'horse and rider' sort of way)."
	Unknown object. Found in a musical instrument shop in the Ochanomizu district of Tokyo. The price was ¥62,000 and the tag read "BAKA BAKA". There is no brand name or any writing on the object; the store clerk did not know what it was. It had a 1/4" audio output.
	Snoopy, a snake robot. "The main challenge in designing snake robots deals with putting actuated joints in a tight volume where we minimize the length and cross sectional areas of the links between the joints. The main concept of our design, as well as many others, is to stack two degree-of-freedom joints on top of each other, forming a snake robot. There are three main schools of designs for these kinds of robots: actuated universal joints, angular swivel joints and angular bevel joints."
	NotNot Tickle Robot. "This small robot walks on the human body to generate a pleasant, tickling sensation. It has two motors and rubber feet for a good grip on the skin. When it encounters a slope that is too steep, it will steer until a safe level is found, and it will continue its way."
	Kenji Yanobe's Atom Car. "Visitors are welcome to ride the vehicle, [Atom Car], which has an on-board Geiger-Muller counter.Three 100 yen cions will activate the vehicle, but it will stop when the counter detects radiation ten times.Visitors have to keep dropping coins into its slot to drive(evacuate).All the proceeds will be used for [Kenji Yanobe Survival Project]."