Infant
Artistic demonstration of a digital infant's reaction to external stimuli.
As a cross-disciplinary endeavor to bring robotics to artistic creation, I designed the hardware system and developed the software framework for Infant, an interactive installation demonstrating a digital infant’s reaction to external stimuli. The concept of Infant is formulated jointly with a student from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and the project was featured in the 2020 SAIC Shows.
- With neural style transfer, the infant’s state of alertness and comfort level are visualized via the gradation of art style in its skin texture.
- With face detection and tracking, the infant gets alerted by the approach and departure of audiences. Such alertness attenuates over time as the same audience remains longer within sight.
- With audio sensing, the infant is also alerted by playful sounds. However, loud noises cause discomfort to the infant.
- With pressure data processing, the infant’s comfort level is affected by touching. Gentle and steady touches comfort the infant, while sudden and strong ones discomfort it.
- With pulse sensing, the infant slowly recovers from malfunctioning caused by too much discomfort.
Sample visualizations of the infant generated from neural style transfer according to its state of alertness and comfort level.