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Sometimes a person has an object they are holding or using, which is smaller than they would prefer.
e.g. half a croissant, instead of a whole croissant.
A coffee table instead of a dining table.
A trumpet instead of a euphonium.
A half-pint glass instead of a pint glass.
In each of these
cases, there are ergonomic issues to do with the interaction between human, object, and (where appropriate) support substrate (e.g. floor or ground).
Proposed is a lightweight space-frame construction which mates with the object and extends its effective size and volume to that of the larger desired equivalent.
For example, with the half-croissant, the space-frame will be in the shape of the other half of the pastry, and will have appropriate mounting points for affixing to the half-croissant. Now the composite object can be displayed, handled, and stacked as if it were a full croissant. In use, the user can hold onto the space-frame and bite into the half-croissant.
(N.B. it is important that the space-frame element of the composite object is used only for ergonomic purposes not for funtional purposes, i.e. don't hold the half-croissant and bite into the space-frame).
Any other spatially-deficient object might be similarly extended in the same way.
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I like this idea, and might imagine a swarm of voxel-like nanobots (or even centibots - the resolution doesn't need to be
that high for most initial use-cases) These might follow a protocol such as:
1) identify an object
2) determine the dimension and extent of insufficiency. For example, a croissant with a bite taken out can be fixed using
simple interpolation, while a half-croissant requires the other half to be formed using a symmetry model. Reconstructing
a near-whole prosthetic croissant from just a single horn might require some knowledge-base of platonic forms from which
to reference. In a different mode of operation, a very small croissant could be scaled up via simple linear translation
into a larger form.
3) Having established (and perhaps agreed with a participating user) an appropriate form, the centibots could then crawl
around, latching onto one another to create a rudimentary scaffold - on further confirmation, they might then invite a
swarm of smaller millibots to add the next level of detail. From there, it's bots all the way down to the desired
resolution. |
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Self assembling robots like this, if smart enough could well become a physical analogue to the general computer - things
that you apply to solving multiple problems, through the use of a generic, all purpose interface. The actual human-robot
interface could itself be physical, ushering in lots of interesting ideas for stylings and interaction patterns. |
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