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A cat comes everyday to our lab and sleeps on a cushion on a chair. One day, we decided that we wanted to be better friends with the cat. At the same time, we were interested in the technology of Arduino+Android: Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform, while Android is an open-source OS for mobile devices. So we decided to think of ways to use this technology to make friends with the cat in a fun and interesting way... |
MINI-PROJECTS 1 Tweeting Cat Chair May 2011 |
Cat. Chair. Arduino. Switch. Digit LED Display. Ethernet Shield. Twitter. This was our first simple project. We decided to make the cat talk. |
MINI-PROJECTS 2 Cat Cushion July 2011 |
Cat. Cushion. Human friends. Arduino. Light Detecting Resistors. USB Shield. Android device. Android phone camera. Fisheye lens. Facebook. This was our second project. We realized that the cat is very lazy and don't like to talk much, and sleeps on the cushion all the time. So we decided to make a 'smart' cushion to take a picture of us when we are hanging out with the cat at his cushion. |
Who we are
Three humans and a cat who are testing out new ways to interact with each other using different kinds of technology.
The three humans are interested in how technology can be embedded in everyday objects or our environment to allow for novel interactions or thinking about interactions between a cat and its human friends, or a human and its feline friends. One of the technologies we are interested in is Arduino+Android: Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform, while Android is an open-source OS for mobile devices.
In the hot summer of 2011 in Singapore, we were at the NUS HCI Lab and exploring and learning about the area of physical computing and the kinds of things we can design with it. Charmaine and Kristal had no prior experience with physical computing, so this project was a fun way to learn about it. The "Human-Cat Interaction" project is a by-product of our exploration.
If you have any questions, drop us an email us at cat@groups.nus.edu.sg
Some references
If you're interested in the kind of thing we are doing (physical computing), you may want to check out these books: