Tribblation

Josh Lifton, Michael Broxton, Joseph Paradiso

Our work is motivated by the prospect of complementing traditional actuation-centered robotics with sensory capabilities similar to those of a biological skin. To that end, we present Tribblation, the first public appearance of Tribble (The Robotic Interactive Ball-Based Living Entity). Independent sensing patches comprising Tribble's outer surface communicate with neighboring patches to form a distributed sensor network of electronic sensate skin, complete with instrumented whiskers, pressure sensors, microphones, temperature sensors, and light sensors. With 516 sensor channels and a total input sensor bandwidth of approximately 5Mbits/second, Tribble is keenly aware of its surroundings. Distributed feature extraction algorithms allow Tribble to react to a wide variety of stimuli, such as petting and rolling, by coordinated actuation of each patch's vibrating motor, full-spectrum LED, and speaker.

Josh Lifton is a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab in the Responsive Environments Group. Michael Broxton is completing his Master of Engineering at MIT in the Responsive Environments Group. Joe Paradiso heads the Responsive Environments Group. The Responsive Environments Group's work has made appearances at Siggraph, Ars Electronica, NIME, and The Kitchen, among other venues.

Acknowledgements: Tribblation is sponsored by the MIT Media Lab.