GMU:Lebendige Spiele:Organization:Landscape

Success Criteria

Decide on the scale of the arena for the ants

• how fast are ants moving - how long does it take for the ants to find something
• how fast does this compare to human movements
• how many turns/intersections do we want in the environment

Timeline Think how the avatar of the human can be incorporated Feedback with human environment so the two are matching 1. Decide on the lay-out/design of the map.

• How fast do human move? How fast the ants? (Test)
• Which areas do we want to reproduce for the ants? (Weimar, Düsseldorf Park,...) (Discuss)

2. How does the board work.

• technical drawings
  • general layout
  • cleaning the board
  • integrating tracking system
  • integrating human movement (projection, laser pointer, little robot avatar,...) (discuss)
• details
  • how to insert the trigger-object
  • entrance; docking the nest
  • safety plans (air, what if they escape, ...)
  • electronics
• material list:
  • electronics
    • Laserpointers for human avatar
    • small robot for human avatar
    • projection
  • building materials
    • wood
    • plexiglas (most logic option because of visibility)
    • plastic tubes min. 6mm
    • screws
    • glue (Holzleim and Hot glue)
• find and prepare maps
  • www.schwarzplan.eu or www.mapbox.com, ask some architecture students, Katasteramt, googlemaps etc.
• prepare lasercut file
• building the actual environment

Activities

• Do experiments to test out the scale
• do experiments with materials
• build

Risks

• The scale is a risk factor because synchronizing can be hard.

Solve by testing it.

• the environment should be ant-friendly and make sure they cannot escape

Time

Scale

• experiments for the scale: first two weeks

Combine ideas with people that are dealing with the virtual environment: after 2 weeks
A lot of things are depending on decision of other groups!

building testing mock ups (if needed)

• 2 weeks
  • scale
  • opening/closing mechanics
  • human avatar

preparing maps and creating laser cut file

• 2 weeks

building the board

• 2 weeks intense work
• can be divided into teams:
  • electronics
  • actual board

Things done so far

First testing with speed of the ants. A track of 60 cm (without the dead ends, this is just the distance to the goal) with 3 intersections was accomplished in an average time of: 90 sec

Compared to humans: Humans walk 1.5 m/s That would mean that in 90 seconds they can cover a distance of 135 meters. Meaning that every 45 meters you would have a route decision making point.

The frequency of the route-decision making points is something we can use in order to make decisions about how big the field should be in the end.