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.
電腦有著不可思議的強大功能, 在於它極具創意的表達方式, 但是大部份電腦, 表達方式僅限於有限的螢幕 也就是我們的筆電以及手機螢幕。 我想告訴你一個故事,是關於 如何將這些強大的電腦 移動身邊的東西和我們互動, 離開屏幕並且進入現實世界, 也就是我們的生活之中。
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.
幾年前,我接了一個電話, 來自一個豪華時尚的商店,叫做巴尼斯紐約, (巴尼斯紐約:Barneys New York, 一家著名的高檔百貨連鎖店) 接下來我了解到的是, 我當時正在設計 商店展櫥裏動態的雕塑 用來放在櫥窗裡展示。
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.
這個叫做“追逐”。 這裡有兩雙鞋子, 一雙男鞋,一雙女鞋, 它們進行著這樣的緩慢的,緊張的追逐, 就在櫥窗當中, 男人嘗試迅速的走到女人的身後, 當他接近她時 她卻又走遠了。 每雙鞋子都裝有磁鐵, 並且在平台下面也有磁鐵, 使鞋子能夠移動。
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.
我的朋友安迪卡瓦托達當時正在建造 一個機器人豎琴,是為了 碧玉的專輯-自然定律的巡演, 我最後負責設計電路 以及動作來控制軟體, 讓這些豎琴能夠演奏音樂。 豎琴有四個分開的單擺, 每一個單擺都有11根琴弦, 所以每個豎琴在自己的 軸上擺動同時能夠旋轉, 這樣就能夠演奏出不同的音符, 並且所有的豎琴 都是通過網絡連在一起, 這樣就能讓它們 演奏出正確的音符, 同時在正確的時間點演奏。
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.
我建造了一個互動的化學展品, 在芝加哥的科學工業博物館, 這個展品讓人們可以使用物品 將化學元素從元素週期表中取出, 然後放在一起, 引起化學反應。 博物館的工作人員發現 人們會在這個展品上花費大量的時間, 一個來自澳大利亞 科學教育中心的研究者 決定去研究這個展品 並且嘗試找出原因。 然後她發現這些人們使用的物品 能夠幫助人們去了解 如何使用這樣的一件展品, 幫助人們透過社會互動去學習。
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?
當你開始考慮這個的時候, 這是非常合理的, 使用一些特別的物品 能夠幫助人們更加容易的 去使用一種介面。 我的意思是, 我們的雙手以及我們的思維 會對思考如何接觸 有形的物體進行優化。 思考一下你覺得哪個更容易使用, 是物理鍵盤還是螢幕上的觸摸鍵盤 比如說手機?
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.
但是讓我震驚的是 這些不同的案子 都是不得不從頭開始, 然後深入到電子元件 以及電路板的層次進行設計, 最後讓所有的機械通過軟體控制。 我想創造一些東西 我們可以通過移動 由電腦控制的物體 並且圍繞這樣的一個想法 建立出互動關係, 而不需要通過這樣的一個流程, 也就是每次建造都是從頭開始。 所以我的首次嘗試這個
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.
是在麻省理工的媒體實驗室 和石井裕教授一起, 我們一起創造了這個由 512個不同的電磁鐵構成的矩陣, 它們能夠讓物體 在它們的表面上移動。 這個存在的問題是 這些磁鐵 耗費了超過一萬美元。 儘管每一個都是特別的小, 但是放在一起它們便會特別的重 甚至是它們下面的桌子 都會開始下沉。 所以我想創造一些東西 也能產生這樣的一種互動 即便是在任何一種桌面上。 要實現這樣的一個想法,
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.
我創造了一小支機器人軍隊, 其中的每一個機器人 都有一個“全方位”的輪子。 這就是這些特別的輪子 能夠方便的朝任何一個方向移動, 當你連接這些機器人的時候 通過一個投影機, 你可以使用這些工具, 和數位資訊產生互動。 這裡有一個例子。 這是一個影片編緝軟體, 軟體中所有的控制 以及控制這個影片 都是通過直接控制的。 如果我們想旋轉這個顏色, 我們只需要進入色彩模式, 然後我們就能由三個不同的錶盤 可以通過旋轉來改變顏色, 或者說我們想改變聲音, 接著我們就會有兩個錶盤。 在這裏左邊和右邊兩個會保持同步, 但是如果我們想,我們是可以調整的, 通過同時調節它們兩個。 這樣的想法能夠讓我們快速 並且高效地操作,並且這些物理錶盤 也同時兼備靈活性和通用性 在軟件設計的系統當中。 在這個能夠反應災難發生地點的
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.
定點地圖軟體中, 你有用這三個物體 分別代表警察,火警以及救援, 調度員可以通過抓起它們 並且把它們放在地圖上 通過這樣告訴他們 應該去地圖上哪個地點, 接著地圖上的這個地點 便會和現實世界中的地點進行同步。
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.
這是一個影片聊天軟體。 令人震驚地是你會發現 你可以傳達多少表情 而且只需要通過操作機器人 執行幾個簡單地操作。
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.
通過這樣的互動方式, 我們創造了很多可能性, 介於傳統的棋盤遊戲 以及街機遊戲之間, 可能產生的互動模式 可以創造許多不同類型的遊戲體驗。
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.
但是之中我最感興趣的是 這個平台可以應用在 那些電腦或者人們 無法單獨解決的問題上。 其中一個例子是蛋白質的折疊。 這裡有一個互動的例子 我們通過對蛋白質增加一些物理端口 然後我們可以通過操作這些物理端口 嘗試移動並且用不同的方式折疊這些蛋白質。 如果我們操作的方式是不可能實現的, 通過後台化學分子的模擬 我們可以得到一些實際的反饋, 事實上能夠感受到這些物理端口 正在阻止我們並朝反方向拉扯。 所以可以感受到 化學分子的模擬過程當中正在發生什麼, 這是一個完全不同等級的互動方式。
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.
所以我們正在開始去 探索什麼是可能發生的, 當我們我們使用軟體 去控制物體的移動。 可能這就是電腦的未來。 沒有觸摸屏, 沒有任何可視的科技, 但是當我們如果想進行視頻聊天的時候, 或者玩遊戲, 或者編排下一張TED演講的幻燈片, 這些桌子上的物體便會活了過來。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)