A computer is an incredibly powerful means of creative expression, but for the most part, that expression is confined to the screens of our laptops and mobile phones. And I'd like to tell you a story about bringing this power of the computer to move things around and interact with us off of the screen and into the physical world in which we live.
就表达创意而言, 电脑的功能 难以置信的强大, 但是绝大多数情况下, 那种表达都被限制在了 我们手机或者笔记本电脑的屏幕上。 我想跟大家分享一个项目 这个项目将计算机引入到物理世界 用计算机来操作我们看得见摸得着的物体 而不是仅仅通过电脑屏幕 进行交互.
A few years ago, I got a call from a luxury fashion store called Barneys New York, and the next thing I knew, I was designing storefront kinetic sculptures for their window displays.
几年前,我接到纽约一家 名叫纽约芭妮时尚奢侈品店打来的电话, 那通电话之后, 我开始为他们的橱窗设计 动态的陈列品.
This one's called "The Chase." There are two pairs of shoes, a man's pair and a woman's pair, and they play out this slow, tense chase around the window in which the man scoots up behind the woman and gets in her personal space, and then she moves away. Each of the shoes has magnets in it, and there are magnets underneath the table that move the shoes around.
这个作品叫做“追赶”。 有两双鞋, 一双男鞋,一双女鞋 它们在玻璃周围演示出 一种慢节奏却激烈地追赶, 男人疾走到女人身后 相距十分近, 然后女人很快离开了。 每只鞋内都装有磁铁, 桌下有磁铁 用来移动鞋子。
My friend Andy Cavatorta was building a robotic harp for Bjork's Biophilia tour and I wound up building the electronics and motion control software to make the harps move and play music. The harp has four separate pendulums, and each pendulum has 11 strings, so the harp swings on its axis and also rotates in order to play different musical notes, and the harps are all networked together so that they can play the right notes at the right time in the music.
我一个叫做安迪·卡瓦托尔塔的朋友之前在 为 Bjork's Biophilia tour 建造一个机器人竖琴 我设计了其中的控制电路 并编写了控制软件 去让竖琴移动并演奏音乐。 这个竖琴有四个分开的摆, 每一个摆上有 11 条弦, 竖琴可以在它的轴上摇摆并旋转 来演奏出不同的音符, 所有的竖琴都相互联网 这样它们就可以在 正确的时间奏出正确的音符。
I built an interactive chemistry exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and this exhibit lets people use physical objects to grab chemical elements off of the periodic table and bring them together to cause chemical reactions to happen. And the museum noticed that people were spending a lot of time with this exhibit, and a researcher from a science education center in Australia decided to study this exhibit and try to figure out what was going on. And she found that the physical objects that people were using were helping people understand how to use the exhibit, and were helping people learn in a social way.
我在芝加哥的科学与工业博物馆 建造的一个互动性的化学展示机器, 这个展示让人们用实际物体 从元素周期表周抓取元素 并把它们放到一块 导致化学反应。 博物馆注意到, 人们在这个展品前呆的时间非常久. 一位来自澳大利亚科学教育中心 的调查者决定研究这个展品 并试图弄清楚为什么。 她发现这种摸得着的小物件 能够有助于人们去理解 如何操作这个展品, 并且是以一种互动的(social)的式.
And when you think about it, this makes a lot of sense, that using specialized physical objects would help people use an interface more easily. I mean, our hands and our minds are optimized to think about and interact with tangible objects. Think about which you find easier to use, a physical keyboard or an onscreen keyboard like on a phone?
通过思考我们能够从中得到很多启发, 人们更容易通过一个专门设计的 具体的小物件对一个系统进行操作, 我的意思是,我们的手和大脑 已经习惯了感知和操作那些摸得着的物品。 想象一下实物键盘 和手机屏幕键盘 哪个更好用?
But the thing that struck me about all of these different projects is that they really had to be built from scratch, down to the level of the electronics and the printed circuit boards and all the mechanisms all the way up to the software. I wanted to create something where we could move objects under computer control and create interactions around that idea without having to go through this process of building something from scratch every single time.
但是在做这些项目的时候 最让我感到意外的其实是 每个项目都必须从头开始 从头设计电路 印刷和制作电路板 到控制软件的编写, 都需要从头做. 我想创造出一个工具 一个跟电脑联网但是可以用手直接控制的东西 可以用它来实现之前提到的交互过程 而不需要每一次都 从无到有地 重新做一遍.
So my first attempt at this was at the MIT Media Lab with Professor Hiroshi Ishii, and we built this array of 512 different electromagnets, and together they were able to move objects around on top of their surface. But the problem with this was that these magnets cost over 10,000 dollars. Although each one was pretty small, altogether they weighed so much that the table that they were on started to sag. So I wanted to build something where you could have this kind of interaction on any tabletop surface.
我的第一次尝试是在 MIT的媒体实验室 与Hiroshi Ishii教授 一起做了一个这个样子的 含有512块不同电磁铁的阵列, 它们可以使物体 在其表面移动。 但问题是 这个设备造价 超过 1 万美元。 即使每一个单元都非常小, 但是它们合在一起的重量加起来 使承放它的桌子 开始摇晃。 所以我想造一个东西 使你可以在桌面上 就可以有这样的互动。
So to explore this idea, I built an army of small robots, and each of these robots has what are called omni wheels. They're these special wheels that can move equally easily in all directions, and when you couple these robots with a video projector, you have these physical tools for interacting with digital information. So here's an example of what I mean. This is a video editing application where all of the controls for manipulating the video are physical. So if we want to tweak the color, we just enter the color mode, and then we get three different dials for tweaking the color, or if we want to adjust the audio, then we get two different dials for that, these physical objects. So here the left and right channel stay in sync, but if we want to, we can override that by grabbing both of them at the same time. So the idea is that we get the speed and efficiency benefits of using these physical dials together with the flexibility and versatility of a system that's designed in software.
为了实现我的这个想法, 我造了一个小的机器人, 每一个机器人都有万向轮。 这些轮子很特别 可以很容易的往任何方向移动, 当你用投影仪与 这些机器人相配合的时候, 你就拥有了这些物理的工具 与数码信息相互动。 我来举个例子. 这是一个视频编辑软件 所有的去操纵视频的 方式都是摸得着的。 如果我们想微调颜色, 我们只需输入颜色的模式, 然后我们便得到不同 调节颜色的转盘, 如果我们想要调解音频 我们便得到两个这样的物理转盘。 这里左右通道是同时始终锁定比例的, 但是如果我们想要揭开锁定, 我们可以双手同时抓住它们。 这个想法的好处在于 将物理转盘的快捷与高效 跟软件设计的数字系统的灵活与弹性 等优点结合起来.
And this is a mapping application for disaster response. So you have these physical objects that represent police, fire and rescue, and a dispatcher can grab them and place them on the map to tell those units where to go, and then the position of the units on the map gets synced up with the position of those units in the real world.
这是一个为应对灾情 设计的地图软件。 我们设计了一些特殊的小物件 代表(消防)警察, 火情和被困群众. 一个指挥员可以抓住这些小物件 将它们放在地图特定位置上 以此告诉那些人应该往哪里走, 然后那些人地图上的位置 与我们设计的小物件在 实际世界上的位置同步。
This is a video chat application. It's amazing how much emotion you can convey with just a few simple movements of a physical object.
这是一个视频聊天应用。 用这些物体的点简单动作 就可以表达出很多的情绪 真的是十分了不起。
With this interface, we open up a huge array of possibilities in between traditional board games and arcade games, where the physical possibilities of interaction make so many different styles of play possible.
这种操作方式也为我们打开了新的思路 传统棋盘游戏和街机游戏之间 或许可以有新的结合. 这种物理的接触方式 能够带来非常多的新的用户体验.
But one of the areas that I'm most excited about using this platform for is applying it to problems that are difficult for computers or people to solve alone. One example of those is protein folding. So here we have an interface where we have physical handles onto a protein, and we can grab those handles and try to move the protein and try to fold it in different ways. And if we move it in a way that doesn't really make sense with the underlying molecular simulation, we get this physical feedback where we can actually feel these physical handles pulling back against us. So feeling what's going on inside a molecular simulation is a whole different level of interaction.
然后对于这种的新的交互方式的应用 我感到最激动的是 将其利用在解决 人与电脑不能独自解决的问题。 其中一个例子就是蛋白折叠。 这个例子中我们给 给蛋白质装上了物理"把手" 我们可以抓住那些把手 并试图去移动那些蛋白质并将其以不同的方式堆叠。 如果我以一个 不符合分子潜在结构的方式移动它, 我们可以得到一个反馈 那些物理把手 会相反的方向去抵抗。 感受分子 内部的模拟 是一个完全不同的互动境界。
So we're just beginning to explore what's possible when we use software to control the movement of objects in our environment. Maybe this is the computer of the future. There's no touchscreen. There's no technology visible at all. But when we want to have a video chat or play a game or lay out the slides to our next TED Talk, the objects on the table come alive.
我们刚刚开始探索 使用软件 去操控环境中 现实物体的可能性。 也许这是未来的电脑科技。 没有触摸屏幕。 科技可以隐藏在视野之外. 但当我们想视频通话 或者玩游戏 或者展示出一条为 TED 演讲准备的 PPT, 桌子上的东西便会活起来。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)