The concept of where Shy Jack's behaviour originates from is inspired from a turtle where it hides itself into the hard shell when they feel threatened. Observing a turtle's behaviour, they don't necessarily retreat into their shell immediately; rather they would be a little alarmed. Once something gets too close or touches it, it will then immediately retract. After a while, the turtle would stick its head a little to check the surrounding before returning to normal and continue roaming about. A video below is where the behaviour was observed.

Utilizing the behaviour, I have translated the action into the interactive origami where the origami would protrude out of a box, and when sensing a presence of something, it will become alarmed, when the object gets too cloes it will then shrinks itself back into the box. To map out its mood, blue, yellow, and red LED diodes are added to emulate whether it feels, safe, alarmed, or scared.

For the initial stage, I first went and compiled the code for the action that determines how Shy Jack will add. Originally, Shy jack was supposed to bob itself up and down instead of staying stationary, however, the random fucntion which allows it to move at different height was creating an unnatural state and therefore that was abanadoned due to time constraint. Instead, focus was on how Shy Jack would behave at different moods.

The main sensor used was the Devantech SRF-05 Ultrasonice Range Finder. There were some problems for the code to respond to the sensor, but after some trial and error, sensor worked fine. As noted in the code, there are three main portions: Safe, Alarmed, and Scared. A sub section has been added for Safe, where it would extend itself slowly as a cautious action before returning to its complete Safe state. Three variables, the "sdiff", "acheck", and "achecks" are used add more dynamic behaviour in its alarmed state where for a certain distance Shy Jack will maintain a certain space between itself and the object it senses. Once the object is within a very close distance it will then become scared and hides into the box.

 

After the code was completed, the next stage was building the origami, the origami was based on the Bandoneion origami design by Eric Joisel's Musicians. This fold was chosen because of all the modular folds, this one is the ideal way where all electrical and mechanical components are hidden from view, and is able to extend and retract. The original research didn't result in a direct find of Mr. Joisel's works, but of another individual who has an interest in the origami. His site provided details and some brief instructions of how it is built, but I've used as reference.

Prior to finding the fold, some other variations were tested, howeve the results were different from what was expected. This phase was the most difficult as it took the most time for trial and error before figuring out the ideal way of folding. The folds took a while, with the final origami taking approximately an hour for it to complete.

After the origami is completed, work ont he box began with shaping the outside shape. The big box with a slanted edge on one side was made in determining how a user would interact. As Shy Jack would most likely be presented on a table, it is angled upwards a little instead of horizontal to maximize the sensor range. The size is a little massive however it is meant to accomodate a cam arm which is the key to pushing Shy Jack in and out of the box.

One challenge in building the electrical components into the box was for the LED diodes to function on the cam. Wires were a possibility to use however it was become cumbersome when the arm moves up and down from its position as it passes through the guide. The only other alternative is to use copper tape that runs along side the surface of the arm. The results were more than satisfying as the arm moved without a problem and lights lit up as needed. Note that as these were one sided copper tape, with the adhesive side non-conductive, istead of foling corners I decided to solder the copper tape together as it was deemed the quickest way to connec all of them instead of trying to line up each corner.

After Thoughts

Although it functions as it was conceptualize, the finishing was a little rough. The form itself is not aesthetically pleasing and the size could be refined. If there is a chance that I could work on revising Shy Jack, three main revision would be focused on:

 

1) The size of the box itself can be changed to a much thinner box. Due to time constraint in building this, I could not focus on spatial design and therefore resulted in a large size of what it became to be.

2) To become more aesthetically pleasing, I would like to change the form of how the shape lookings like, in addition, the origami itself could also be changed to a much more attractive shape than what it currently is.

3) other than the origami itself I would also lie the box to somehow respond to the behaviour. Currently revision would be added LEDs onto the face of the box, but another input was to make the box move rather than just the origami itself. 

 

Finally, if from an industrial design perspective, I see a potential of this becoming something to build on establishing a closer connection to couples over long distance, similar to a feature that was shown on the Apple Watch. The behaviour and the lights shows possibility of couples communicating across the digital realm with a physical representation over using video chats to connect with one another.