Week 5

Posted on by Abhishek Ambre

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the weekly update of our project. 

We had our quarters on Wednesday this week. During our quarters we had faculty visit our project room in groups of 2-4. We were given 15 minutes to present our project briefly, explain our goals, process and show our prototypes, finally get some feedback on our work and suggestions for future weeks. We also worked on exploring mechanics and developing 4 prototypes this week. 

 

Process

In the previous weeks, we brainstormed ideas before we actually had a Cozmo. So, after we actually started working with him, most of the ideas did not seem feasible yet! Hence, we switched gears focusing on simple mechanics that would be fun and engaging. We decided to go bottom up and developed a few working prototypes exploring the space we are working with. Our goal here was to have a set of working mechanics that we could use as building blocks to a more complex game.

Our Design Pillars:

  • Experiences best suited for Cozmo’s capabilities
  • Experiences that are satisfying for both Adults and Kids!
  • Playing with Cozmo NOT as Cozmo!

Our Goals:

  • Exploring innovative interactions between Cozmo and the guests
  • Focus on single Cozmo and single / multiple guests

Current Limitations:

  • No Communication between Cozmos
  • No Microphone on Cozmo
  • No Custom Audio playable on Cozmo
  • Stays awake as long as the Mobile App is running in foreground
  • Only active when programs are running
  • No autonomous behavior

Expected updates in future SDK:

  • Custom marker support
  • Custom Display

Development

This week we also focused on exploring a few features and developing prototypes on the side. We were able to showcase these during the quarters. 

  • Quick Tap (Prototype)
  • Cozmo Unity (Experimentation)
  • Face Detection (Experimentation)
  • Cozmo building a Fort (Prototype)

Quarters

We are working on an alpha version of the Cozmo SDK, and there are some limitations due to that. Our goal was to convey to the faculty about the limited space we are working with and the fact that we would be getting SDK updates in the near future. 

Faculty Feedback:

  • Constraints and Limitations are good, but these seem too restricting.
  • Would be interesting to have track type experience where Cozmo follows a set pattern
  • Emotions seem to be the standout feature, capitalize on that!
  • There is something magical about the way he expresses
  • Face recognition is a strong suit, and should be explored more

Some Questions:

  • Can we use other devices to overcome some of Cozmo’s limitations?
    • Like using an external microphone for Audio Input
  • What is the most exciting demo that Anki is proud of?
  • What is the Deliverable? Target Demographic?
  • Why such a limited space? Is it the robot or the SDK?
  • Can you request access to his final SDK? Can they share his idle behaviors?
    • He would feel natural, also the team will not have to spend time working on that rather than exploring new things.

Observations:

  • Some faculty wanted voice as a primary mode of communication
  • Most faculty wanted to move the cubes and Cozmo (This distorted his sense of space)
  • Almost everyone wanted him to have idle behaviors

Changes post Quarters

After the quarters, we decided to focus on prompts that we would use every week to explore and develop prototypes. The prompt single or multiple would be chosen at the end of every week. Here is a list of prompts we might explore:

  • Tools for Cozmo
  • Virtual objects / Puzzles
  • Camera / Custom Markers
  • Speech
  • Multiple Players / Cozmos (not communication with each other)
  • Reflex Games
  • Memory Games
  • Story / Moments
  • Subversion
  • Drinking Games

Quarters Sit-downs

We had sit-downs on Friday where we got to spend 30 minutes with interested faculty who wanted to discuss more about the project. This was helpful especially because we got to delve deep into our prompts. We also reworked our goals for the semester.  Finally we brainstormed with the faculty which helped us have a different perspective.

Overall we had a great week, with some really helpful feedback. Thanks for reading, and do drop by next week for more updates!