The flying cubes [SAILS] at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City

Nicolas Reeves, creator of the cubes project, presents a unique event at DSM-V+ / Folie Culture. I'm in charge of software and hardware engineering. The installation is about the interaction between 3 cubes and visitors. Visitors will have the opportunity to chat with the cube. I won't reveal all the secrets of this project, but basically, the cube listens to the visitor, looks into its memory and replies. The visitor sees 2 faces of one cube: one shows a living eye, moving/opening/closing in real-time (the eye of a speaking actor), the other show the mouth of the actor, moving will s/he speaks to the visitor. A helmet designed by Luc Courchesne does the image capture of the actor's eye and mouth. A system designed by the University of Montreal does the tracking of the cubes movements, and does a real-time rearranged projection of the eye and mouth on the moving faces of the cubes. See photos for more details.

Balloons with SAT and Thom Sokoloski

We wrapped up the prototype to control the lighting system of a wireless network of Internet-controlled balloons (photo 1). We also finished the scale model of the project (photo 2), controlled by a personal computer. This is all embedded programming, so if you're curious, the prototype's executable code is 8 Kilobytes (including wireless, I/O and power drivers), the scale model's 22 Kilobytes...

We flew our cube at Concordia... Audience showed emotion

That was a great event organized by Hexagram at Concordia University in Montreal yesterday. Outstanding. So many great projects were presented. From smart clothes to robots to motion capture... We (Nicolas Reeves, Jean-Bruno Valiquette and I) closed the performances by flying our cube. I was appointed pilot in charge. Waow. Challenging. This cube we made from scratch, with tiny wood and plastic pieces, embeds a 60g Linux computer, WiFi included. It can be piloted manually (from a computer keyboard so far), or automatically (avoiding obstacles, stabilizing itself at some altitude, making basic decisions, being able to identify other cubes and gather with them in cluster. We kicked this project off 2 and 1/2 years ago. We've made some significant progress, but there are others to be made. This is research in both technology AND arts.
First photo shows the cube before take off, puzzling a lot of people in the audience.
Second photo shows the cube flying above 200 persons. We heard a bunch of 'ohhhhh', 'wowwwwwww', 'ahhhhh'. I was both nervous (because of the responsibility and challenge) and moved (by the audience's emotion). Next version will include photobehaviour, a user interface, and likely a homemade control box to provide superaccurate movements.

Prototyping hardware&software for a historical event

A client of ours hired us to architect and prototype a system for an important Canadian event to come. We can't reveal to much about it, but you'll hear from it as soon as our client advertises on it. The photo shows a prototype allowing to control a tabletop model of what we think the system could look like. Sébastien Bire was the wood guy here. So far, we've been working on the hardware aspects. Software coming up.

Flying robots at "24 hours of sciences"

This was another great event. We presented 3 flying cubes at UQAM's "24 heures des sciences". The audience was very receptive and enthusiastic. By the way, one of our cubes sneaked away, and found itself right under the videoprojection of CitySpeak, a Web/wireless application that projects on a wall the messages sent by people all around the world, from a Web browser, a PDA, a cell-phone... This photo shows our name "NunaSoft", input from a PDA, and projected on the cube.
More on SAILS project.

Article in L'Actualité

We're really glad to be onboard this project led by Nicolas Reeves at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). Onboard is the right word... that was a pun actually. This project consists of flying cubic ballons, inflated with helium, controlled by an embedded tiny-tiny computer. This is a great example of what's going on in this new discipline called robotic arts.

L'actualité published an article.

By Pierre Cayouette

Song of a maple

This is a project created by Lorella Abenavoli, a psycho-acoustic sculptor. She dedicates her work to making audio pieces off natural phenomena. This one is about recording the rise of sap in a maple and transforming the recording into an audible artwork. Rise of sap is a complex process. First issue is related to frequency: we're dealing with ultrasounds in the 500KHz-1MHz range, which requires very specific devices such as hydrophonic microphone and ultrafast acquisition card. Second issue is storage: to have a good quality of signal and make sure there's no loss while recording, we have to sample at 2MHz * 16 bits = 32 Megabytes/second (1 minute=1,8 Gigabytes). Next issue is transfer of data. And last issue (but not least), processing. This one is for Lorella! Here's a screenshot of what it is that our application does.

AMN : Montréal in an aquarium, illuminated by radioflashes

Pardon me??? No, you read well. It is a project created by Nicolas Reeves. A multidisciplinary project called Archi-Fictions. An architect and a writer create a collective artwork, which will be presented by an actor. Architecture, literature, thater. I forgot to mention there's some serious technology as well. I was in charge of designing and developing the control system. A 3D scale model in resin represents some parts of Montréal. It's sunk in a homemade mix of water and coloring substance, so that the city is invisible. A computer listens to the radio, scanning the FM spectrum, and depending on activity of radiofrequences, flashes a set of lights that makes the city visible. Such a flash can be seen on the 1st pic. 2nd one shows actor Marcel Pomerlo reading the text written by author Jean-François Chassay. This project is on display at galerie Monopoli on St-Antoine in Montréal till June 10. More here.

The cubes on Discovery Channel

The cubes on Discovery ChannelDiscovery sent a team to film the flying cubes and interview us. Apart from giving us a chance to give this project a wider audience, it allowed us to meet a team of seasoned media professionals.More at http://www.exn.ca/video/?video=exn20051026-blimp.asx

First group flight of 3 cubes, in public

We made it. At Hexagram again. We had three cables, stabilized at the same altitude, able to make the difference between an obstacle to avoid and another cube. Algorithm was:
if (obstacle)
if (cube)
get closer to it
else avoid it
else do nothing
Easy, huh?!?
1st pic shows Nicolas explaining the experience to the audience.
2nd pic show a videoprojection on the cube.
3rd pic is one I shot with my 10.5mm rectilinear fish-eye, from very close to an edge of the cube.

Getting prepared for 1st group flight

This is Lucie and Jean-Bruno who are having a rest (a deserved one). We are all working hard for this first public flight with 3 cubes. The first flight "in society" for our babies. Our job is to make sure that Nicolas' scenario for the presentation is turned into reality. In the background of the photo are 2 helium tanks, the very same we use to inflate the cubes.

First public flight at Hexagram

We were able to get the cube take off and float around in a tiny space (photo: area between white fabric sheets) without touching anything. The when played and amused the audience by playing music scales with engines: just by changing rotation speed of engines. I had programmed a set of macros for minor, major and blues scale. Technology... and arts, right?

Two new cubes, smaller model

Our first baby cube was 1m80 in size. We made two new cubes, a bit smaller: 1m70. This is a challenge. Losing only 10cm, we also lost 16% of volume, thus floatability. We have to make mecatronics stuff at least 16% lighter. Very challenging. Not impossible, though.

Homemade motor controller

We used a PIC from Microchip to communicate with the Korebot over the I2C bus, and generate PWM to an H-bridge and control speed of motors. It's written in C. I love those microcontrollers.

Engineering propulsion of cubes

Now that we improved floatability and overall structure, it's time to move on (pun intended) to more... movement. The Korebot Linux embedded computer (60 grams with WiFi card) from K-team in Switzerland will do the job. Other than that, we chose Lithium-Ion Polymer for our energy source. We kicked NiMh out because of its memory effect, because of less-predictible voltage drop, and because of hard-to-assess differences of performance between the various elements composing a battery package. We're using Devantec's SRF08 ultrasonic sensors for obstacle detection. On the table, you can seethe propulsion prototype with batteries, engines and wires.

Cube control panel

This is a screenshot of the C application, run in terminal mode from a PC. It shows basic status info about the environment in which the cubes evolves. Take a chance to brush up on your French!

Helium stuff

Hey, I thought I should show you our helium gear. Cool, huh?!? There's a huge pressure level inside. This "big bottle" was tested against crashes from the top of buildings. Better not break the valve.

Cloud harp on its way to Pittsburgh

The cloud harp woke up again for an upcoming performance in Pittsburgh. As it's due to stay outside for a long period, and why not, under the rain, we've covered it with several layers of polyurethane varnish (photo 1).
A huge truck is required for transportation (photo 2). Once installed, it will stream over the Web music created off the shape of clouds.

First take off

We inflated the cubic balloon that's inside the wood structure, and "cut" the umbilical cord of our baby, I mean the RS232 cable that connected the onboard Linux computer to our ground-station laptop (see picture: cable hanging down). We were all worried because:
1) we didn't know how much to inflate it
2) we didn't know if it'd take off at all
3) we weren't 100% sure if the balloon was big enough to contain sufficient helium for take off, and compensate for structure+mecatronics weight
But, when we saw it majestically and quietly take off, we immediately turned off the helium valve and put the stopper on the balloon. Waow. Really: WAOW!
Look...

Cube done

We built our first cube. So far it's only the structure. It's wood and some parts are plastic (joints and screw). It's really light. We were not able to find the wood pieces off-the-shelf, so we had to engineer tools and processes to make our own. Here's our first baby.

The flying cubes: project kick off

It's official. Nicolas Reeves (NXI Gestatio design lab at UQAM) hired me to take care of the engineering part of an exciting research project in arts and technology. And Art&D project!
The goal is to design and implement a society of floating cubes, embedding a PDA-size computer with wireless capabilities, engines, batteries, sensors, that are able to move around, avoid obstacles, get together, serve as a floating 3D screen for videoprojections from the ground. No less, no more. Attached is a picture of our homemade workbench, and the first batch of beams we made.