CanHaptics Lab 1: No-Tech Puppeteering

Task: Create three hardware sketches that move 1 mm, 10 mm, and 100 mm. No-tech materials only.

The first lab for the course involved creating haptic sketches using DIY materials only and to try and use indirect human actuation for the same.

As someone new to the field, my goal here was to try and learn as much as I could about different kinds of movements — rotating, rolling, vibrating, splashing, oscillating, etc. So I decided to try and incorporate as many of these as I could.

Special mention for Rubia Guerra, who hung out with me on Zoom for a virtual lab session where we brainstormed some great ideas for actuating the motions!

Most of my prototypes were minutes-and-hours level — rough, crude, low-fidelity, no-tech. However, for the 1 mm sketch, I iterated a couple of times, wanting to get it right, and it turned into more of a one-day sketch, still low-fi, but with more effort and variation.

Resources:

Since this was a DIY task, I added another constraint to my project to not go and buy any additional materials, just repurposing what was already around me. Also a wise decision during a pandemic I’m sure. I managed to gather a lot of stuff from empty containers, wooden cutlery, old earphones, chips cans and tried to use the same stuff for different sketches.

1 mm sketch:

Inspired by Rube Goldberg machines, I wanted to create a fancy setup that had an anti-climactic ending — just moving something by a minuscule 1 mm. The table at my place afforded a nice 2-level setup, and then I just got around to thinking what motion could I create. Having no plastic balls around, or any smooth spheres, I went with the best alternative I had — Reese’s cups. The rolling motion converts the stored potential energy into kinetic energy, which is then transferred to the second cup. This then gets transferred to the other hanging cup. The cups knock down the batteries (used as dominoes) which eventually push the mint box off the edge. On the bottom level, I used a wooden spoon as a lever to launch another Reese cup, where it hits a pair of tongs to make them vibrate. What I measured here was the distance the tongs moved — they vibrated with an amplitude of approximately 1 mm.

Materials used:

Chip cans, tongs, batteries, a box of mints, salt shaker (for structural support), rulers with cardboard affixed to make sure the Reese cup wouldn’t fall off while rolling, wooden spoon, old earphones and bag tag loop as strings, Reese peanut butter cups, tape & scissors

I had to iterate over this sketch a couple of times, the initial setup I thought of:

What I ended up with:

If I had more time, I would have liked to make a more solid setup — many of these elements weren’t stable enough and I had to redo the whole process multiple times for it to work end-to-end.

Reflection:

I always wondered how complex it might be to make those Rube Goldberg machines, especially ones that traverse entire rooms. With this setup, I realized it is a tough task to think of ways to continue motion and to keep the flow of energy going. I enjoyed thinking of ways to transform the energy into different forms and the different motions I could use for the same. I had not considered these many types of motions before, so brainstorming over this idea definitely helped broaden my knowledge of energy transfer and motion.

10 mm sketch:

For this sketch, I wanted to explore a combination of motions I hadn’t done before, and so I thought of this setup where the lever pushes a weight off and an object falls down. I wasn’t sure how to get the 10 mm in, just the object falling didn’t appeal much, so I decided to instead drop it into a bowl of water and measure the displacement of the water. The fun task here was setting up the lever — I kept thinking of how to make a fulcrum with the existing stuff I had and eventually settled on a bottle cap with a rubber band to secure the wooden spoon lever. Here too I did a few trials with different weights before finally finding this clingwrap ball worked great. The last task was thinking of how to not actuate the movement myself, and so I ended up triggering the lever by opening an umbrella.

Materials used:

Plastic container, rubber band, bottle cap, clingwrap ball, Reese peanut butter cup, boxes, wooden spoon and fork, water, earphone wire as string, tape, umbrella

My initial idea:

What I ended up with:

This sketch did get a bit messy — the container was too shallow and so there was a tiny splash zone around the area. I didn’t have any better containers or measuring cups — those would have worked great to even accurately measure the movement. Rubia also suggested non-Newtonian fluids which would have been a cool idea to explore, but I didn’t have cornstarch so I couldn’t make that, but would definitely like to try it out in the future.

Video:

Reflection:

The indirect human actuation part took me the longest, but it was fun to think of different ways of not interacting with the sketch. Trying different heights and different masses was a fun physics recap as well to get an accurate movement of 10 mm.

100 mm sketch:

For this sketch, I decided to use a pulley system to try and move a weight upwards by that distance. A challenge here was thinking about how to remove the human actuation from the setup; after much ideating I decided to use a water bottle with a tiny hole at the end that would help in gradually increasing the weight at one end of the pulley, thus creating the movement I needed. This was the most fun sketch of all, simply because it was gradual so I could observe the motion in detail and was easy to set up as well.

Materials used:

Rolling pin, chip cans, wooden fork, old earphones as a string (Yes, I did not have strings or glue so I cut up my old earphones. No, they weren’t working anyway), plastic container, water bottle, hand sanitizer bottle, tape, water

My initial idea:

What I ended up with:

The rolling pin kept falling off, so I added the wooden forks as supports. I kept trying to find a suitable weight that would work, and then remembered these travel-sized sanitizers I had received on my flight to Canada — they worked perfectly and looked good too!

Video (sped up to show movement, complete 100 mm displacement took around 1.5 minutes):

Reflection:

I spent the most time figuring out how to actuate the pulley system without human interference. This made me realize that until now most motions I had considered were human-actuated, and it’s not that easy to automate such movements. Many techniques exist like Rubia had explained how she had thought of a soda can steamer, or fans out of plastic bottles to initiate the motion, or using coke and mentos to perhaps push something outwards, but most of these ideas require time and effort as compared to simple human movements.

Overall, I enjoyed tinkering with various objects for this lab, it reminded me of a school project. This was a great way to learn about different motions and how we can actuate them. I also had fun rummaging around the house trying to find stuff that could work and thinking up ideas around whatever I could find!