All posts by felixanderson

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The Shoe Charger Midterm Presentation

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The shoe Charger Midterm Presentation

Felix Sam and Jay

About the Project!

A lot of people waste their energy walking and not making any use of it. So why not recycle it? We’ve come up with an idea to turn that energy into electrical energy to charge a portable charger. Our idea is to make a shoe that uses thermal energy and convert it into electrical energy while walking, and use that energy to charge a portable charger that is plugged into the shoe. When the user is out of energy on their phone or tablet, they can use the portable charger to charge their devices after walking a certain amount of time after charging their portable charger.

Materials:

Materials used for the project was Arduino.

 

Diagram of How it Works!

 

Diagram #1

Diagram #2

Shoe Concept Design:

 

FullSizeRender (1)

FullSizeRender (2)

 

Interior Design:

 

Shoe Sketches #2

 

As you can see, there are two ways to place the charger. One way is to place the charger in the sole of the shoe. The person can easily plug it in and take it out with ease. Another option is to place the charger on the back of the shoe. The plug will be sewn in and stick out for the person to plug it in.

 

Shoe Sketch #3 2

The heel of the foot will push down pressure for energy which will convert into electrical energy and charge the battery in the shoe.

 

Outcome?

In the end, we were able to make a prototype that works that can turn thermal energy into electrical energy to charge a portable charger. With this, we continue to move forward with this idea and have it built in a shoe for further testing.

Future?

We plan to continue on working on the concept of the idea to charge a portable charger through thermal or kinetic energy but in different ways besides walking.

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The Battery Shoe Charger

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Group:

Felix Anderson, Saman Tehrani, and Jay

So, we are changing our original idea to something different, a lot more simple than previously. Our idea is to make a shoe that charges a portable battery to charge your phone. A lot of people waste energy walking, or doing something constructive. Well, why not use that energy? We will take thermal energy, the wasted energy from walking and convert it into electric energy to store in the portable battery, so that way when a person is running low on battery life and has nowhere to charge their phone, they can take the portable battery out of their shoe and start to charge their phone that way. The concept is a portable battery will be stored seamlessly in the shoe or the in the sole, and every time you walk, it recharges the battery. Hopefully, our device will be used for many devices in one, such as the iPhone, Android, HTC, and tablets. This is a useful device, and something people can make use everyday. People walk and use their phones majority of their time, so we have thought of combining the two, which go hand in hand.

Timeline:

We will meet every Tuesday to work and talk about the project.

10-7:
Find research about the technologies used to convert thermal energy into electrical energy and fully understand the concept.

10-14:
Start testing on the product. Illustrate an idea of how it would work and implement in the shoe.

10-21:
Have a prototype that works complete.

Things we need:
-Arduino

shoes-charger

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The Robot Project

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Group: Felix Anderson and Saman Tehrani

Description:

So we will be doing research on EEG signals, in which we can get these signals using EMOTIV devices to understand more about brain-computer interface(BCI), which is a connection between the brain and a computer device. Our goal is to see if robots can obtain human performance through these devices. EEG is the recording of electrical signals along the scalp that measures voltage fluctuations within the neurons of the brain within a short period of time. The source of EEG activity is the electrical charge maintained in the billions of neurons and identify oscillatory activity in the brain. The EMOTIV devices we plan researching is the EPOC/EPOC+. The EPOC/EPOC+ comes with 9 axis inertial motion sensors, which will help with our research on EEG signals. It can conduct facial expressions, performance and emotional metrics, and mental commands. Another EMOTIV device we plan on researching for use is the EMOTIV Insight. This 5-channel headset can record brainwaves and translate them into meaningful data we can understand. With both of these devices we can understand more about performance, mental commands, and facial expressions and use that for our research to map EEG signals to a robot interface, in which we will use a moving hand by using brain commands and signals. Having the electrical signals of brain fetched from EMOTIV device, we can start analyzing them and translating them into an understandable format and language for robots and computers. Mapping the inputs to computer understandable output for a robot, we will try to control a robotic interface with only human brain and not using any other sensors. In future, this research might lead to findings with which we would be able to remove the mapping phase and translation phase. This means that, we could control a robotic interface with raw and non-manipulated inputs of human brain. In case we are not able of purchasing this device to have our own brain recordings, we should think of using freely available EEG brain samples to advance our research.

photo-main

EMOTIV Insight. This 5-channel headset can record brainwaves and translate them into meaningful data.

emotiv_epoc_large

This is the EPOC/EPOC+. It comes with 9 axis inertial motion sensors. It can conduct facial expressions, performance and emotional metrics, and mental commands.

Pro_0

Here is a small drawing of the diagram of our research.

Assignments, Uncategorized, Week 2, Week 3

Mobile Lab Prototype

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Breathalyzer

My idea is a device that can be used to detect what type of sickness a person has, whether it be heart burn, migraine, stomach bug, any types of cancer, etc. The device is a small screen with a wire connected to a breathalyzer. The screen is touch-based. The user would scan their finger on the screen after checking they are male/female first. After scanning the finger, the device will pull up their medical history, and tell the user what they have.

 

Inspirations for this idea:

The breathalyzer. This gave me an idea that maybe instead of checking to see if someone is drinking, we can see what kind of sickness the person might have after experiencing some symptoms.

The iPhone is another inspiration. Phones are starting to be able to be used for healthy reasons, such as read heart rate, blood pressure, etc.

Assignments, Uncategorized, Week 1

Hi, everyone!

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WIN_20140830_163730

Hello! My name is Felix and this is my second year in BFA. I am majoring in  DT. My background so far is graphic design, illustration, and some bit of coding (Arduino/Processing). I have a strong interest in video game design. Since I came to this school, I’ve learned a lot about digital space and the different concepts games can be made and played. I like to utilize the many things I learned to create something awesome. On the side, I like to draw, illustrate, play games, and have fun.

 

Inspiration: 

Inspirations are drawing, art, and illustrations of the future or fantasy, that show the relation of robotics and humans.

 

The two images above are general examples of my inspiration. The third image is an image from the game Titan Fall. I used this image because of the relation of technology and how humans use it in that setting as war machines. In general, its interesting how media shows what technology can be like and how people use it for many different ways.