Recent Projects
Parabolic Acoustic Reflector
My uncle Marv was heavily involved with US Fish & Wildlife for many years. He loves nature, its sights and sounds, but could never easily record distant bird calls. I decided to design and build an all-in-one system to help him listen to and record nature at a distance. I considered thermoforming the main shell, but I really wanted to put my new 3D printer to the test. Using the printer afforded me a great deal of flexibility in the design process, and one day I will be able to compare final physical assembly to the meshed model in a multiphysics software package. Click on the pictures below to find out more:
Side view of the final 3D model assembly.
Geodesic Dome
During the winter of 2015 I became fascinated with the simplicity and strength of geodesic domes. I decided to create a geodesic dome for an upcoming camping trip.
Final assembly of the geodesic dome, complete with hammocks and dyed parachute.
Boston Museum of Science, Exhibit Technical Design
I worked as part of a team of designers to conceptualize, design, and fabricate exhibits and products for the Museum of Science in Boston. I handled the technical aspects of our productions: 3D modeling, microcontroller programming, machining, welding, wood working, custom circuitry, CNC fabrication etc. This page is a small sampling of the projects I've worked on between 2012- 2015.
Design Challenges Exhibit: Drop ZoneKinematics, elasticity, engineering design, and golf all in one interactive! Visitors build a trampoline around a frame with hair ties, rubber bands and cloth, test their design in our measurement unit, and then try to make it better.
I developed the system that measures the time of flight of the golfball as it bounces, and reports the calculated height apex of the trajectory to the visitor. The Science of Pixar ExhibitContent to be uploaded.
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Technology Spotlight Exhibit: DaktariPart of the mission of the Museum of Science is to convey scientific advancements in a manner that everyone can understand. The Daktari interactive exhibit challenged us to do just this. Daktari Diagnostics in collaboration with Continuum Innovation created a CD4 tester that is the size of a lunchbox. To showcase one of the many innovations that helped make this feat of engineering possible, we produced an interactive exhibit that demonstrates a mechanical analogy to how white blood cells are filtered out from red blood cells in Daktari's CD4 tester.
We used magnets placed along the back of an aluminum channel to pull steel ball bearings (silver color) away from plastic balls (red color). The angle of the channel determines the flow rate, and therefore the ratio of balls captured to balls missed. |
Creating Museum Media for Everyone (CMME)The Creating Museum Media for Everyone (CMME) project aims to develop toolkits for universal design. As part of a team of team of four organizations including the Museum of Science, WGBH National Center for Accessible Media, Ideum, and Audience Viewpoints, we attempted to push the boundary of haptic interfaces to benefit the visually impaired.
It seems like every dynamic haptic technology available today is either extremely costly or too hackneyed to be worth investigating. Though our version of a haptic display rode on a meager budget, I was still able to produce a few pieces to test with our visitors. The general idea for this specific project was to generate a touchable physical representation of a graph of data. The ability to compare between multiple graphs was an additional priority, and so this machine needed to be dynamic and proportionally controlled to a certain resolution in order to generate different touchable graphs. |
MIT John B. Sylber Studio
"Museum Studio is a place where the art studio, the engineering lab, and public forum combine to create a genuinely 21st century learning environment; a place where each student can discover his or her individual genius and voice." This is the studio I managed for Seth Riskin and Allan Doyle, co-directors of the MIT Museum Studio on the second floor of the MIT Museum.
Otto Piene Robotic Light BalletThe MIT Museum Studio first prototyped Otto Piene's "Robotic Light Ballet" at the beginning of last summer of 2011. Our frame was made of 80/20 extruded aluminum bars, 0.125" thick aluminum plates and all the associated machine screws, nuts, and lock washers to keep everything together. The prototype did exactly what it needed to do: support a delicate and heavy box-like light source, and move throughout a room in a very stable manner. Below is a video of the platform in motion.
The Light Ballet needed to be ruggedized for international travel to art shows and museums around the world. The motion platform (our hexagonal robot) must be able to traverse across more uneven flooring and should be able to calibrate its position and then calculate its "dance" or path to traverse much like the Roomba vacuum cleaner by iRobot.
For me, this requirement meant: -extended battery life/ capacity on board. -welded frame (reduces the likelihood of the frame falling apart) -larger wheels for increased suspension -rangefinders, motor encoders, proximity sensors, and tactile switches to interpret and guide its motion. |
iPod Touch HolderCustom designed for the 4th generation 8GB iPod Touch. Leaves room for 30 pin connector and 1/8" headphone jack. This simple case is intended to protect the Museum-owened iPod from physical harm and prevent the user from opening or closing out of the custom designed app for the iPod. To do this we recessed the Hold and Home button behind a layer of acrylic so they are accessible only by knowledgable MIT Museum Staff. Not fool proof, but good enough for public use as a supplement to the museum's exhibits. 4 spanner screws, 4 layers of acrylic protection, 4 threaded inserts, 1 logo.
Acrylic Waveguide Exhibit LabelsDesigned for the "Ways of Seeing" exhibit lead by Seth Riskin and the MIT Museum Studio. These labels were designed to produce illuminated text without polluting the surrounding installations with extraneous light. The photo to the left depicts an early proof-of-concept. Visible to the left and right part of the black rectangle are the ends of a green cold cathode ray fluorescent light which provides a thin and continuous line of illumination through the acrylic label above it.
Arduino Compatible Strobe ControllerCommissioned by the Education Center at the MIT Museum, this strobe controller's purpose is to receive user commands and output a specific sequence of flashes through a strobe. There are a total of 4 buttons on this strobe controller, 1 toggle on/off, 1 flash duration, and 2 sequence duration buttons. The arduino I chose to control the strobe can be reprogrammed via USB from any laptop.
One problem with this interface is that the controller triggers the flash sequence as soon as a sequence duration is chosen. Next iteration will definitely include a separate trigger button. |
Consulting for MIT Art, Culture, & Technology group
MIT HearSay House Operation: Reykjavik, Iceland
Class #4.333: Höfði House / HearSay House
Professor Gediminas Urbonas of the MIT School of Architecture & Planning and his class of six students came up with some creative ideas for interactive art installations to be set in Iceland's Reykjavik Art Museum and the Höf∂í House. These projects concerned mostly the role of the Höf∂í House as a meeting place between Gorbachev and Regan during the Cold War. More information can be found here. My role was managing the technical design of each of these projects to make sure they worked and could undergo the stress of constant public use without electromechanical failure.
After the first iterations were installed in Reykjavik, some projects required maintenance and others needed sensors or networking to be fully functional. Below I have illustrated some of these projects and the design process behind each.
Class #4.333: Höfði House / HearSay House
Professor Gediminas Urbonas of the MIT School of Architecture & Planning and his class of six students came up with some creative ideas for interactive art installations to be set in Iceland's Reykjavik Art Museum and the Höf∂í House. These projects concerned mostly the role of the Höf∂í House as a meeting place between Gorbachev and Regan during the Cold War. More information can be found here. My role was managing the technical design of each of these projects to make sure they worked and could undergo the stress of constant public use without electromechanical failure.
After the first iterations were installed in Reykjavik, some projects required maintenance and others needed sensors or networking to be fully functional. Below I have illustrated some of these projects and the design process behind each.
Breathalyzer Mapped to Weather Balloon DiameterYes, this is exactly how it sounds. This project connects two different locations in Iceland- the Reykjavik Art Museum (RAM) and Höf∂í. People at Höf∂i were served either whiskey or vodka, symbolizing their political standing as respectively American or Russian. The blood alcohol content (BAC) of each person was to be averaged over an hour and then sent over the internet to the RAM. Here at the RAM, an Arduino-controlled pump system would map the BAC to the size of its weather balloon. The higher the BAC, the bigger the balloon.
We needed to quickly prototype a cheap breathalyzer and a programable pump system. |
Chair Pressure Sensor Mapped to Dot Matrix PrinterThe concept of this piece of work was to visually represent the occupation of each chair used in the meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan as they discussed a possible treaty. When the chair with the black pressure sensor detected a person sitting, the dot matrix printer would print out a black square. Additionally when the chair with the white pressure sensor detected a person in it, the dot matrix printer would print out a white square.
If this project had started out using pressure as the main mode of sensing, or even a simple proximity sensor, then we would likely have been further along by the time we reached our deadline. However, we started this project by sensing the capacitance of the area above the chair, using an arduino connected to a woven pattern of conductive thread. Static electricity from the fabric ended up throwing off our time signatures for capacitance sensing so much that the system was registering occupation even when no one was in the room. Perhaps it was the ghost of Höfdí?? So I developed my own type of non-invasive pressure sensor that could comfortably fit on the chair without using glue, screws or any potentially damaging adhesive, and was comfortable to sit on. The trick? Anti-static integrated circuit foam. |
