Anthony Ko

The CTIN 542 (Interactive Design and Production) class, started with a few fun exercises to kick-off the class… We began with the monk on a hill logic puzzle. (Not particularly a fan of these things in because you never know if the people really figured out the puzzle, or if they've just heard the answer before.)

The other exercise, which was quite a bit more fun to work through, was the spaghetti cantilever bridge challenge. The idea was to use build a structure attached to our desks made of dry spaghetti and a small bit of tape with the goal of making it longest span possible before the tip touched the ground.

Working with Mike Brazil to construct our bridge, we started at the tip and built toward the base. We tried to keep the bridge pretty light weight, especially in the area farthest by the base. One solution was to use to arched pieces of spaghetti to push up against the main span.

The solution worked out pretty well and we had the best performing structure, even so, I went home trying thinking about all the stuff we could've done to make it better. Good stuff.

Update:Vince has some photo's from last year's class:

Posted by Anthony Ko at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More formally known as the consumer immersive viewer, the project aims to modernize the existing viewmaster. Naimark writes about the core features such as a "look around" capability. There has also been talk about adding augmented/mixed reality to the project, and some Marshall MBA students are involved with the business aspects of getting the project off the ground.

Julian began to building some prototype viewers last summer and so I thought I would try to see if there was an easy way to create some initial content for the viewers. Julian had pointed me to some papers on creating stereo panoramas and so I decided to use that to do some directed research last semester.

I constructed a motion controlled rig to take a series of photos to be stitched together for a panorama. It was built using some wood, a DC motor, and an Arduino to control its rotational speed.

Existing software was used to slice and stitch the photos resulting in below (you'll need the red/cyan glasses to experience the stereo effect):

You can read more about what the methods I used in this pdf.

Posted by Anthony Ko at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)