Sous Chef Technology - so much fun!

Spicy Peanut Chicken

This colorful stir-fry gets its kick from a dash of red pepper.

Ingredients

1. 1/4 cup chicken broth
2. 1 tablespoon cornstarch
3. 1 tablespoon sugar
4. 2 tablespoons soy sauce
5. 1 tablespoon white vinegar
6. 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
7. 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8. 1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs or breast halves, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
9. 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
10. 1 teaspoon grated gingerroot
11. 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
12. 1/3 cup dry-roasted peanuts
13. 2 medium green onions, sliced (2 tablespoons)

Directions

1. Mix broth, cornstarch, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and red pepper; set aside.
2. Heat wok or 12-inch skillet over high heat. Add oil; rotate wok to coat side. Add chicken, garlic and gingerroot; stir-fry about 3 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in center. Add bell pepper; stir-fry 1 minute.
3. Add broth mixture to wok. Cook and stir about 1 minute or until sauce is thickened. Stir in peanuts. Sprinkle with onions.

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Possible Technologies to use with the Interactive Surface

Technologies that I am currently looking at for this project are RFID tags and 3D barcodes to tag food product packaging. When you place the objects on the interactive surface, the 3D tags in conjunction with a a web cam, should be able to identify what food is on the surface. 

When you unpack your shopping, if you placed it first on your surface, it could log what food you have. This could help with suggesting recipes to cook. It could also help with making shopping lists.

Recipe Surface& Interactive Aid

... following along this theme of the counter recognising your ingredients, instead of twittering for recipes, it could search the net for them. Then take you to the site for them and find out how to make them. 

...Or there could be a library of recipes that gives you suggestions from the ingredients you.ve placed on the surface. Depending on the amount of people you want to cook for, the recipe quantities could change to suit you. Also in order to help you cook, there could be more than one sense used ie instead of having to read off a screen, it could be more visual with a video or  audio included.

Using gesture recognition, it could be really fancy, it could even be a weighing scales for you when you place an object on it, you could draw a circle around the object with you finger and it singles it out so you can get the info you want from it, ie the weight of it.

The Magical Island - RFID Tags / Video Tracking & Social Interaction

Another idea is to use RFID tags or Video Tracking on kitchen objects such as mugs which can be used to interact with the surface of the countertop and there is a few ideas where this comes into play.

Twitter

One of the ideas was to have the objects able to interact with each other and twitter about what is going on. For instance, Through movement of tagged objects on the surface this creates the table to twitter about what is going on. Each item is tagged either to an individual or a name or purpose ie a mug that is used by housemate x who particularly likes coffee is placed on the surface which then twitters "Shane in enjoying a nice cup of hot coffee". Another housemate comes along who hates coffee and is more of a tea man with lots of milk, it twitters "Carl has just joined Shane for breakfast but isnt a fan of the coffee, he's more of a milky tea man"

Each object could be given a list of tag words which it uses to create dialogue. When another person or another object is brought in, it starts a dialogue between them, ie a packet of biscuits (ie in the future, everything would be tagged) is put on the table and twitters "someone brought out the chocolate hobnobs, they mean business!" or "someone is hungry" or "yum, yum I love chocolate hobnobs!" etc

Each object could even have a profile attached that could be updated to keep the tweets fresh and more unique.

Another way to use twitter for this interactive surface would be that you could put the ingredients you want to make your meal out of. The counter would recognise these ingredients and use them to twitter for recipe suggestions. When you find one you want, you could get the step by step instructions for it.

The Magical Island - Augmented Reality

Another idea is to use Augmented Reality tags on kitchen objects such as mugs which can be used to interact with the surface of the countertop

The Magical Island - Visual Map

So now that I've moved towards the idea of designing an Interactive Magical Island (just to clarify, not one in the sea, a kitchen one). What shall it do and why...

Scenario One

A group of housemates are sitting around the island having a cup of coffee and a snack. The table detects where each person is through sound waves and creates an abstract visual map on the surface. As people are talking, ripples start to appear on the surface coming from the direction of where people are talking. If people are closer, louder etc, the ripples will be stronger and more distinct. 

By placing objects on the surface, this causes the ripples to bounce off it. If it is a heavy object, it causes a faster, stronger deflection than a smaller or lighter object,

I'd see something like this being made using sensors which communicate through arduinos to processing to create the graphical content - possible something like the video Flight 404 did for Goldfrapp.

Redesign / Banal Design

I've been looking at the idea of Banal design which highlighted the intellectual and cultural void which was perceived to exist in the furnishings of industrial society... (more to come on that one!)

Table as a teasmaid

Another idea would be to use the table as a teasmaid and visual display. Something like, if you're sitting around the kitchen table and you ask someone if they would like a cup of tea or use trigger words, it would transmit to the kettle and turn it on. The table could then respond by displaying something visual and artistic that says the kettle is on.

 

The idea would be that it would be a social and humorous addition to the home. A pattern could also be created that would display the consumption of tea that day. Depending on how big the picture was, it could give an abstract visual description. 

Concepts - Table as a Mood Reflector

One of the ideas was to use the table to show the moods of the inhabitants. Using voice sensors to detect the pitch etc the table could reflect the mood, ie if people are angry - its red, if people are happy, it's yellow.  If someone is shouting the table could start to build an abstract art pattern in dark, red tones but as they change their tone, the continuous pattern starts to evolve into a different colour. A paint my moods sort of thing!

The table could detect each individual voice and it is assigned a random colour and the voice range could produce a different continuous shape.

There is also the idea that it detects the mood and if people are angry the table could display, emit sound or light patterns to calm people down and restore the equilibrium.

Some of the ideas for shape have come about by looking at:

Paolo Ruffi - La Cova (1973)

Donato D'Urbino & Paola Lomazzi - Grionalan De Pas  (1970)

Gaetano Pesce - Donna Model No. Up 5 & Up  6 (1969)

Masanori Umeda - Gestsuen  & Rose (1990) 

Rocky Semprini & Mario Cananzi - Tatlin (1989)

Dissertation Panic

So here I am on June 18th in a wee bit of a panic over the dissertation project! It's been a while since I've blogged so I'm just going to throw some of the ideas out there to see if my trying to formulate them into some kind of discernible form, it will help to clarify them in my head!

Firstly, I'm going to do a little regroup with what I am doing - Interactive Living for the Domestic Market. Within this, I was looking at both appliances and furniture and through research was led towards designing an interactive table. The key words were ludic engagement, experience, communication and social interaction, home and ambiguity.

With further research, I decided that I wanted to focus on the kitchen. It has long been an important part of the Irish home, not just for cooking and eating but for socialising. How many times have you gone into a house, been offered a cuppa and sat in the kitchen, having a good auld chat!

From this again, I moved towards the idea of using a kitchen island instead of an actual table. I felt it was more inline with 21st century living.

This moved onto the idea of an interactive countertop area, a place where people could interact with both co-located people and distant located people. 

I wanted to use the area of social networking to aid people's lives in the home.

Sound Sensors

I've been looking at using microphones to detect sound and measure the intensity of the pitch of speech in a room which would then be converted to abstract graphics on a surface. Another idea would be to pinpoint where people are in the room by the noise they make which would be captured in the graphics created. Therefore the graphics would be constantly evolving in relation to what is happening in the room. All I need to do is find out how to do this!! I think I need to convert the air pressure signals to electrical signals to do this?!?

Polygon Playground

The Polygon Playground is a large scale interactive lounge object made by WhiteVoid which reacts and changes continuously to the presence, movement and touch of the people interacting with it. The installation features a software aided 3D surface projection system to cover the object with a seamless 360 degree projection mapping. An additional sensory system detects peoples positions and proximity. I really like it's not a flat object and people can interactive with it by being physical and climbing, jumping, running etc on it . To see it in action, click here