Art / Fida / Family Archive / Meerkat / Tuba / TellTable / Other Brother / SketchStorm / Autonomous Presence
The Other Brother, my master's graduation thesis, is an autonomously behaving object that can capture spontaneous moments by means of video, photo, just sound or photo with sound. The object behaves as a character being part of a certain social setting. This could e.g. be a birthday, wedding, a cosy evening, a dinner with friends, etc. The Other Brother is placed at the centre of the table and responses to sound by means of microphones that enable the device to rotate towards a sound source. The object is equipped with a camera that is controlled by micro-controllers, enabling it to spin around 360 degrees and tilt up- and downwards, altering its capturing angle.
The Other Brother project did not solely explore the possibilities for an autonomously capturing hardware device but also explored several possible digital services to re-experience captured moments. First of all it enables the possibility to capture very spontaneous moments, moments you could never capture with a normal photo-camera. Moreover, it is possible to choose whether to directly send these moments to a digital picture frame (or any other media playing system) or a web-service. Apart from the exploration of this service, that enables people to share moments with e.g. friends, family or colleagues over a distance, the project also explored an interface for interactive tabletop surfaces. With this interface it is possible to filter, change and share captured moments locally.
For a complete overview of the project you can have a look at the video here. During the development of the prototype, several user tests were executed and a final diary study within two families was conducted. The work work has been published in a paper and presented at TEI 2009.
The image above is a second version of the Other Brother in which all electronics, sensors and actuators have been integrated in one shell. The images below show an exploded view of all the 3D printed components and several interaction features.
