Pocobor.

An Eskimo can build an igloo in 40 minutes (how to build an igloo). It took three friends and me almost 11 hours to build our first igloo. BUT, the resulting structure and the night of sleep within were very satisfying. On the spectrum of technology, an igloo is much like a wheel: low tech on the whole, but very technical in the details. It is a remarkable structure that is elegant, highly efficient, and can be built using only snow and a saw. However, each block of the igloo must be shaped and placed very carefully if the structure is to support itself.

When we set out into the woods near Lake Tahoe, I brought my mobile phone just in case of an emergency. I tend to do this a lot (“just in case”), but normally there ends up being no phone signal and my phone is dead weight. However, when we arrived at the site of our soon-to-be igloo, I was surprised to see that I had full reception for my phone. With lots of work ahead of us and having no interest in receiving phone calls or emails, I turned off the phone and set it aside. This was no place for technology! We were there to build an igloo!

The next morning, before leaving, we discussed ways to document our little snow dwelling. Beyond the many photographs taken, we decided we should create a blog for the igloo (in hopes that others might find it and update us on its standing). We originally planned to do this once we got back to civilization, but with 3G mobile coverage, we realized that we could do it all from within the igloo! It was quite a technological contrast – using an iPhone to create a blog from within an igloo.

It is this technological contrast that I wish to highlight here. We live in a world of technology, but we also live in a world of igloos. As we get caught up in email, apps (the iGloo app is the next big thing), and digital everything, it is important to remember the simpler, perhaps more elegant, forms of technology that have existed for thousands of years. While the latest technology may be the best thing since sliced bread, sliced bread may just be the best thing since the igloo.

Check out this great book I used for reference and build your own!

Recently Gizmodo put up an article about a project one of our interns was working on while she was here at Pocobor. The project is a ring bearer robot for her sister’s wedding. I remember her working on it while she was here, and thinking, this is going to be a very interesting wedding. I’m glad everything worked out well, and hopefully the robot didn’t drink too much and hit on the DJ equipment. Not funny? Ok, here’s the full article.

A prototype version of the soft morphing blob robot.

I recently heard about a robot being developed jointly by iRobot and researchers at the University of Chicago that sounds like science fiction come to life. The concept is a soft, shape-shifting robot that moves by something called “jamming skin enabled locomotion.” Check out the video that the researchers have released that does a much better job than I can of explaining the ideas behind the technology and showing their prototype in action (to skip the details and get to the action, scroll to 1:50):

I am excited about this project for several reasons. First of all, there are some very interesting potential applications enabled by the robot’s ability to morph its shape and traverse complex terrain. Such a device could squeeze through small holes or cracks and be an extremely valuable tool for rescue operations (think collapsed buildings, for instance) as well as national security purposes (I would guess that this is why DARPA is funding the project).

Second of all, I think the project is a great example of a concept that is captivating enough to generate excitement in people who wouldn’t normally care about advances in robotics. The idea is so fanciful and yet at the same time easy to understand that it has a way of capturing the imagination (for me, at least). And anything that gets more people interested in science, technology and engineering is good news in my book.

Tesla Motors is exhibiting its Roadster Sport next month at the Detroit Auto Show. They are “shipping” their car by driving it the 2700 miles between Los Angeles and Detroit. The cool thing is they are going to drive the car 2700 miles without having to use a single gallon of gasoline. It’s true that they will need to recharge their batteries from the grid every couple of hundred miles, but at least their power “could” be coming from a renewable energy source like wind or solar. It’s a start.

In general I love the idea of electric cars. They’re clean, they’re quiet, and they use electric-motors, which means high low-end torque and great acceleration!

I’d also like to congratulate Laurel, one of our former interns. She’s now an employee at Tesla Motors and has been chosen to drive one of the legs of the trip to Detroit. Have fun.

Here’s a link to the official website for the Tesla drive to Detroit: http://www.teslamotors.com/roadtrip/

We recently returned from an amazing two week trip to Uganda, Africa! We were there deploying a handful of product prototypes for a field study and meeting our users face to face. The image above is the site of one of the deployments, which was a typical off-grid (no electricity) village home and business. It was an amazing hands on, user-centric design experience, which gave me the opportunity to identify and empathize with the end user. An incredible amount of information was exchanged and user behavior understood in a very short amount of time. From the first deployment on, opportunities and design changes have been swirling in my head. Now that we’re back in SF we’re ready for the next phase of the project, even as field data continues to trickle in.

I enjoyed experiencing the polarity of the bustling city and the quiet and peaceful country. The capital city, Kampala, was vibrant and alive with movement everywhere. The countryside was beautiful with more rolling green hills (and Matooke, the local green plantain) then I’ve ever seen. The people were incredibly welcoming, friendly, and hospitable, which made us feel immediately comfortable and at home in both the city and the country. I’d just recommend using extra caution when crossing the road; the pedestrian in Uganda has no right of way.

The electronics district in Kampala.

Does it get greener than this?

A recent email thread from bird-watchers in my hometown got me thinking about the interaction between technology, nature, and humans. An osprey, a fish-eating bird of prey, named Mr. Hannah, has traveled over 3,000 miles south from New England into the Amazon over the past few weeks, and thanks to an electronic transmitter strapped onto him, humans now have even more reason to envy birds and their worldly travels. We may be able to use calculus, and we’re smart enough to worry about the future, but I’d bet that you might trade some brain power for a pair of wings and a self-guided tour of the globe. The maps show the September and October journey of Mr. Hannah down into South America. See this website for further detail of Mr. Hannah’s journey.

The specifics of bird migrations have long been an incomplete puzzle to scientists, but with data from birds such as Mr. Hannah the Osprey, the puzzle pieces are falling into place. Many technologies have converged to make this possible. GPS and satellite communication hardware have become small enough to be carried by a bird, batteries have reached a critical size, power, and weight to be highly portable, and information systems now exist to receive and manage the data as it is sent from remote transmitters.

There is no doubt that this miniaturization trend will continue to accelerate. The limits of size, power, and complexity will be pushed to satisfy our increasingly demanding expectations and will enable scientific investigation, such as that seen with Mr. Hannah, that was impossible just a few years ago. New technologies will allow huge leaps in what we know and understand about nature and our planet, and because these technological challenges lie at the heart of Pocobor’s expertise, we’re looking forward to being part of the journey.

The actual design process is a little more complicated than this.

One of the things we’ve found ourselves talking about a lot lately around the office is the design process for smart or mechatronic products and what makes it unique. Because design processes in general are so open-ended, they are difficult to speak broadly about but I think that effective mechatronic design requires its own approach and is worth thinking about.

Not Really a Process

First off, I actually think that the term “design process” is a bit of a misnomer in general and particularly for smart product design. To me, the word “process” implies a set or fixed course of action almost like following a checklist or recipe to arrive at a predetermined outcome (in this case, the final design). However, because the goals and parameters surrounding any given design problem can be so varied, it is impossible to specify a universally good design process. The path followed during the creation of a good design can be different for every design and every designer.

For smart products, which cross the boundaries of traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical design, electrical engineering and software development, to name a few), this is particularly true. The increased number of design considerations resulting from the large number of facets of the design increases the number of potential design paths – both good and bad – significantly. However, it is still possible to identify some common factors in the creation of a good design. Instead of a process, though, I prefer to think of it as a mindset that facilitates good design.

What Is The Mechatronic Design Mindset?

It can be useful to think of designing a system or device as a series of trade-offs – consider the ever-present cost vs. performance tradeoff or something like the relationship between engine horsepower and gas mileage. One of the things that differentiates mechatronics from more traditional design is that the number of tradeoffs and inter-relationships is usually higher. When the designer makes a choice regarding (for instance) the mechanical design, s/he has to consider not only the ramifications for the other parts of the mechanical design but also how that choice will affect the electronics and software of the system. To design effectively, the designer must embrace a mindset that considers tradeoffs and consequences that may not usually be considered for certain subsections of the design.

Who Is Designing?

Saying this isn’t very profound – it’s basically common sense. However, following this line of thought has some practical ramifications for designers of mechatronic systems. The main conclusion is that designers of smart products should cultivate skills across traditional engineering disciplines so that they are able to understand and appropriately weigh all of the applicable factors when making decisions.

It is certainly possible for a mixed team of traditional engineers (e.g. mechanical engineer + electrical engineer + programmer) to create a well-designed mechatronic system. However, I would argue that the level of collaboration and communication required for this to occur in practice is prohibitively time-consuming and difficult for most design problems. Instead, I think the most effective practice is to involve designers who have some expertise in all of the relevant fields, which allows them to easily consider all of the facets of the system together. Although the time required to become (and remain) conversant in multiple disciplines typically precludes brilliant-guru level expertise in any one, an effective design team can be assembled for any given problem that combines multi-disciplinary mechatronics engineers with traditional engineers as needed.

Why Should You Care?

Smart products are becoming ubiquitous in our lives. From the car you drive to the temperature control system in your house to the digital camera in your pocket, systems that used to be strictly mechanical are increasingly integrating microcontrollers and becoming smarter. This new class of systems demands a new mindset and a new approach to enable the most efficient and effective creation of new designs.

I was watching Return of the Jedi the other night for the 723rd time and was amazed at how well the original 3 are holding up in terms of special effects given advances in the field over the past 30 years. There’s a scene in the movie where Darth Vader hands the Emperor Luke’s light saber, to which the emperor responds

“Ah, yes, a Jedi’s weapon. Much like your
father’s. By now you must know your father
can never be turned from the dark side. So
will it be with you.”

Now for those uninitiated geeks out there, one task every Jedi must do on their path towards Jedihood is to build their own light saber.  Because of this every light saber is unique, and carries the distinctive fingerprint of the Jedi who constructed it.

But what would be the appropriate mechatronic “light saber”? It would have to be something that encompasses mechatronics (software component, electronics component, and mechanical component), something that every mechatronics engineer builds at some point during their training (also known as grad school) and something that would bear the distinct mark of the engineer who built it. The more I thought about it, the more the answer seemed obvious …

an autonomous robot.

An autonomous robot, perhaps better than any other product, completely captures all aspects of mechatronics. It needs a well designed mechanical system in order to move around and interact with its environment, it needs electronics in order to sense the world around it and drive all its actuators, and finally it needs software to take all its different inputs and make decisions. At some point during their mechatronics course work every mechatronics engineer has had to build a robot. Because the design of a robot can take so many different shapes and forms, it would be almost impossible for two engineers designing independently to design the same robot.

So, I would like to propose a challenge to the world: before you become a true mechatronics engineer, you must build your own light saber robot. Now, unlike with Jedis, there is no Yoda figure to judge and pass your robot (actually there is, Professor Ed Carryer of Stanford, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his days deciding which robots are worthy enough to allow their designers to call themselves a mechatronic engineer), so it is up to the individual engineer to judge his robot worthy of mechatronic acceptability. If this catches on, this actually shouldn’t be a problem, because employers would expect potential hires to bring their mechatronic light saber to all interviews.

Ultimately my dream of having all mechatronic engineers build their own robot in order to be considered a true mechatronics engineer is to help foster a sense of community and fraternity around mechatronics. I believe the more mechatronics engineers feel tied to one another, the more we will collaborate with each other, leading to greater and more ambitious projects.

I came across a blog post about the Arduino yesterday on an industrial design blog, Core77. I was definitely surprised to see an entire post dedicated to the Arduino, an open-source electronics and embedded software platform which targets DIY’ers and non-engineers who want to build/hack smart products, on a blog that focuses primarily on product and industrial design. The Arduino is getting great exposure and keeps popping up in places I wouldn’t expect. I’m excited the conversation about and accessibility of smart product design is spreading.

Why I’m Excited

The Arduino provides scaffolding for outsiders and non-embedded system designers, to understand and explore smart product design. It doesn’t matter what your experience or skill level is, Arduino provides an extremely accessible interface for people to get started, from both a hardware perspective and a software perspective. The electronics come packaged and ready to go, with easy to use connectors and easy to understand labels. Several vendors even provide drop-in electronics, called shields (click for a list of shields), which provide specific functionality (ie motor control) to the user with little effort. The free software interface provides a level of separation and simplification from the Microcontroller (MCU). Users have access to easy-to-understand functions and don’t have to familiarize themselves with specific registers and modules of the MCU.

People you wouldn’t expect are getting their hands dirty and cool things are happening. The internet is ripe with cool projects people have put together on their own and there are a ton of project examples and project guides to get people involved. Everyday people are building their own smart products!

Why This Matters To Me

Most importantly, the discussion is finally spreading to people in different walks of life! The exposure allows people who aren’t necessarily engineers to see the possibilities available in smart product design. Different perspectives can easily join the brainstorm. I’m convinced more wild and crazy ideas will be born, not only in garages but also in the office. Ultimately, better products will be designed.

And hopefully the realization of what is possible with a simple open source tool will lead people to imagine what is possible from a professional service firm (ahem Pocobor) and the value we offer. If nothing else, it helps me describe what I do and how technology is being incorporated into new products we use in our everyday lives.

Get Involved

We’ve even put the board in an open source project, called PedalOn, we’re completing for a client to allow customers to modify or rewrite the system software. We’ll talk more about this project in the coming weeks.

An Arduino is even inside PedalOn, a Pocobor project.

I encourage anyone not directly involved with smart product design to get their hands on one of these and start playing. The barrier to entry is low; you can get one for less than $30 from Sparkfun. Or try another distributor - for a full list of distributors look here.

Recently I have been using LEGOs to prototype a gearbox for one of our clients. Every time I dig into a box of LEGO parts and hear that familiar rustle of plastic components, I am struck by how useful LEGOs are for creating rapid models of mechanical systems. And while I normally use LEGOs to build smaller-than-life models of larger systems, a group in England is constructing a full-size house, complete with LEGO shower and toilet, from millions of LEGO blocks! Seriously! Check out more here.

I am very interested to see how they incorporate LEGO’s “Mindstorms” robotic technology into the house. I can imagine motion sensing light control and a LEGO HVAC system powered by a Mindstorms computer. Of course, they may have bigger issues to worry about, such as waterproofing the roof.