final smart surfaces project ideas

Per our group agreement we all signed we have generated a large number of ideas and reduced them now to two. This is actually lower than our target of three. We were unable to choose between them and remain split three and three between them.

Idea one: A school of robots on a surface that interact with each other and form shapes and unique patterns and movement. Personally this idea sounds less like a surface and more like a bunch of robots. I would like to see this become a window covering surface, a shade, of many moving and flipping panels. These panels would have some ability to communicate with each other promoting some sort of emergent complexity.

       advantages; could get power from solar panels if on window, could perform a purpose like shading an area from a light source, a more interesting adaptive surface (smarter, more of an adaptive surface)

Idea two: A collection of ceramic, plastic, and wood shapes that contract and when they contract make noise. These would be somewhat linear in shape and be arranged in an array. The noise makers would respond to human movement and contract like a coral reef full of unique noisy critters.

        advantages; could take advantage of lighting and auditory effects, many different ways to make noise, could immerse a person in a space full of these, modular building ability, easy set up (big movable panels that can be set up on site)

We hope to pick tomorrow in order to establish a useful budget and concentrate our effort on a prototype.