AI in Python

Using Python as programming source, a "Connect 4" game was build where you could play against an AI. This AI used the Minimax algorithm, Alpha-Bèta pruning and heuristics. The wooden layout of the game was made by lasercutting. To recognise the red player-piece, the openCV library was used for the object recognition. The player could save its move by clicking the button. Furthermore, the AI-pieces were visualised by LED-strips. These LED were controlled by Arduino and the serial communication between Python and Arduino. Here is an overview of the implemented code:

• Minimax
• Alpha-Bèta pruning
• Heuristics
• Object-recognition
• Serial communication

FishGame

In module 4 for the course Algorithms, I made together with my partner a FishGame. This FishGame was made in Processing, which is based on Java. The goal of the game is to eat as many fish, and get as big as possible without dying.
The game used a statemachine to go through the different stages of the game. The water used 3D noise and for the rain falling from the sky a mass-spring-damper system was created. The seaweed had Perlin noise, and the sand used the random Gaussian distribution. For the rest were there small fish and big fish who flocked together, and when eaten blood particles are created. There is also a hook your fish will need to watch out for, this hook acts on a mass-spring-damper system as well.

Here is an overview of the new things that were learned in Algorithms:

• Random Gaussian distribution
• Perlin noise
• Mass-spring-damper systems
• Particles
• Flocking
• Statemachine
• Noise in 3D

Abgespaced

Together with Veronique Kochetov, we created a game based on an art work that could be found at the university for our final assignment for the course Programming in Module 1 "We create identity". There are the evil aliens and that want to invade the planet of the good aliens. You can shoot by pressing the spacebar and click to move the aliens to rescue them from being shot by the spaceships. The orange helicopters are also there for shields to protect the orange aliens.

My Processing Creature

In september 2018 I started the course Programming, where I learned step by step how to create and evolve my creature. This was done in Processing, which is based of of Java. This is what my snowmans currently look like.
You can interact with them by clicking on them and see what happens.
Try it yourself!

Learning and movement

The topic of this module's project was combining learning and movement. After doing research in this area and having interviews on what teachers would like to have, the project group found out that children in lower schools learn better via movement. A problem on Montessori schools, more individual based schools with mainly self study, is that children don't get to speak the language because of the lack of lesson materials that helped improve English pronunciation. Which means they won't get to learn from trial and error. The only way they can learn is when the teacher corrects them, but that is a lot of work if the teacher has to do that for every child.
Therefore, EDDY was created. the EDDY-ball was created to help children learn how to correctly pronounce English words. It is used to learn simple, single words. It is a tool that helps children woek independently on their pronunciation of words.

The EDDY works as follows: children can shake horizontally to be asked questions (e.g. Translation and pronunciation of a word (in Dutch) and shake vertically to receive feedback of the correct pronunciation of the word (in English).

Master of the brain

In module 4 "Art Impact & Technology", the main project was about creating an art installation for the Gogbot festival. The topic of Gogbot was infotech and biotech. Therefore my project group decided to focus on manipulation of the brain. The message was that manipulating the brain can be good nor bad. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what they want. But most importantly they need to understand the risks and what can happen. People need to have enough information to base there own descision on. This means that all point of views need to be included.
Therefore, "The Master of the brain" was created. The viewer of the installation could interact with the installation by manipulating the "brain-settings" of the "person" on the table. These brain-settings correspond to the nervessystem of the human body. When changing certain aspects the patient on the table would respond to that. For instance there were capacitive sensors on the body that could be touched, the stimuli of the nerves were represented by LED-strips. The speed of these nerve responses were represented by the flow of LEDs. When touching too many places, the body gets over stimulated. The body will go into shock and the only way to save the patient is to touch the heart and get yourself a shock as well.
This shows that overstimulating can produce more harm then good, and drastic measures will need to be taken to safe the patient.

Click here to read more about Gogbot

Here you can see some pictures and a video of the created installation.

Project Living and working tomorrow

In module 3, the project groups were connected with an outside client. We chose to help Paul Trossèl as our client. Paul has locked-in syndrome, this means he has very limited movement, he can move his eyes and one thumb.
Paul wanted something to have more input in the lectures he gives together with Femke Nijboer. By proposing ideas and getting a list of requirements from the client we created a prototype. He wanted something diverse and not operated by his eyes because the system he has is very expensive and he is afraid that moving it so much might break it.

We created a Soundbox, with this Soundbox Paul would have more input. The soundbox could be connected to the button Paul already had. The Soundbox worked as follows, the LEDs indicated what audio file was active if he would press the button. This means that when something happens during the lecture Paul could wait a few moments for the light LED and audio to come up and then press his button. The audio file would then play. Paul chose 6 different audiofiles he likes to have as input. These files could be switched via the SD-card by Femke Nijboer, according to the content of the lecture they would give that time.

Here is a short video of what the implementation would look like:

Interactive Video Project Module 1

In the first module we had an interactive video project. We needed to make our own movie interactive by adding choices and thereby different storylines. The genres of our movie are action and drama. We chose to mix two subjects for our movie, a bombtheme and a hangovertheme. I made this movie with my interactive video project group. We named ourselves "Drop the cam!" and the groupmembers were: Veronique Kochetov, Armein Dul, Jorn Buse, Quirine Vafi and myself. ...

The movie starts of with a boy waking up, having flashbacks of the night before. Afterwards he looks down and sees that he is wearing a bomb around him. Then the phone buzzes and he receives a message from Anonymous. It says “I will be tracking your process. Finish dismantling the bomb in time, or else. -Q “. Then the first choice appears, you choose between waking up your friend or calling the police. The story continues in different directions depending on how you answer the questions. You can either have a good ending, here you are able to dismantle the bomb in time, or a bad ending, here the bomb explodes. That is also why the title of the movie is "One way or another".

This is our flowchart on how we envisioned our movie.

In the end we took out the girlversion to have a finished project. So the bottom halve of the flowchart we weren’t able to realise. Although we did have it filmed, we weren’t able to edit it.

My role in the movie was playing the friend of the main character.

There is a deeper meaning to our story than the watcher of the movie might think. We made the movie also about an assignment. You fail if you have plagiarism in your assignment and you pass if you didn’t have any plagiarism. So you have to choose your right resources. In the movie it is displayed in the choices too. For instance, in the beginning of the movie you have to make the choice to follow your own solution or to follow your friends solution. When you think about plagiarism following your own solution is of course the right choice and following your friends solution is the wrong solution.

Overall I think we had a great project, I really enjoyed working in this group. We made some hard decisions but in the end it was all worth it.

At home, I made some paintings that I would like to share.
The first one is a realistic black and white owl that I painted with acrylic paints.

The second one I tried a more abstract approach. Creating chesspieces from different tree sorts.

Cultural Challenges course: Open Atelier

In module 3 Living and Working Tomorrow I followed the Cultural Challenges course: Open Atelier. Here I made two paintings. On the left is my first painting and on the right my second painting where I tried to get more depth into the painting and colours.

Drawings

I made some drawings that I would like to share. ...

I have 3 drawings, I made them all at home because I really like to draw.
The first picture is a drawing of a flower.

Rapid prototype sketching

In module 2, Smart Environments, the course sketching was there to learn how to quickely and clearly sketch out ideas to be able to talk and share them with others. The course started with how to draw straight lines by hand, to evolving into creating own imaginairy 3D organic form objects. Here are some of the sketches I made.

WaardenburgInterim website upgrade (HTML)

The website had an old design, which the manager would like to have updated. That is where I came in and handled the refreshing of the website. I gathered the information that was needed to be displayed on the website and made a design. Then I coded the design in HTML. It was also necessary to create a mobile version, which it did not have before. Click here to check it out

The previous website:

The updated website:

Calculating through chess

This project was from 2016-2018, in cooperation with 468 Chess Innovation from Jozias Hillenkamp and together with Martin Elderson, a game was created to combine chess and mathematics for primary school children.
The idea was based on research from the University of Groningen that children who play chess are often quite well at mathematics. Thereby, mathematics and chess are a good combination, and go often hand in hand.

My part in this was designing and programming the game. The tool used here was Construct2 and later upgraded to Construct3. Construct is an HTML5-based game editor, developed by Scirra Ltd. It is an ideal editor to develop apps and games, therefore it was also chosen for this project.

The game looked like a road where the chesspieces had to stay on, you had to make your move before the chesspiece reached the end of the screen. The game was divided into two main different games, one was focussed on counting while the other was focussed on the tables you had to learn in primary school. The counting game was designed to make children think about future moves and what they needed to obtain to reach their goal. If the score was still lower then 200 the numbers were added and once you passed 200 the numbers you took became subtracted. The table game was to show children that tables aren't boring and there is no standard order to learn them in. The game was so that you could choose which table you wanted to work with. On the road you had to pick up the numbers that were in the table you picked. If you were wrong you lost, the idea was to get the longest time and obtain as many multiples possible. (this part was still under development)

This game was also tested with children of primary schools. Many of them preferred working with the webbased app over the normal addition, subtraction and multiplication exercises. Which was as expected, according to the predictions made.

Here are some pictures of what the code looked like in Construct3 and the interface of the game:

Maya & Unity

In module 3 Living and Working Tomorrow I had the course Interactive Visualisation. We learned here how to model all kinds of objects in Maya. We learned how to create different 3D textures and how to apply them. Learning how to make animations of the objects and making the objects move. We also learned how to work in the Unity environment. ...

These are some of my three-dimensional creations.

Foam modelling

In module 3 Living and Working Tomorrow I had the course Human Centred Design. These are the prototype designs that I came up with.

The first design is:

The second design:

The third and final design:

Physiological sensors to improve human well-being

In module 5 you were writing a literature research project as a duo about a self chosen topic. The reasearch question that was chosen for the report was "How can we measure physiological signals using sensors, to improve human well-being?".
An interactive poster was created as well, where the viewer of the poster could measure their own stress level based of of there heartrithm. This was made by a BPM measuring sensor, Arduino and some coloured LEDs to indicate the stress level.

The abstract of our report was the following:

Nowadays, in a meritocratic society, health and well-being are becoming more relevant. Various sensors can measure different kinds of physiological signals indicating the health state. However, is it possible to improve well-being by measuring these signals in daily life? This paper answers this question with focus on stress levels and sleep quality by using the method of systematic literature research and analysing the findings. It was concluded that “wearables” combined with user feedback are a good tool to measure physiological signals daily, to improve well-being. Discussed implications are personalised healthcare, health issue prevention or generally a better insight of own health.

Here is also the poster that was created for the postermarket.