2014 Early Work and Short- and Long-Term Goals

To start the year out, I have taken a step back from code while waiting for things to get up and running again and have spent time working out logistics for the future of Tyler, our floor tile pressure sensors.

The last post demonstrated the differences in Tyler's pressure-sensing abilities with and without a foam-tile covering. The foam covering actually helped to make areas of pressure surrounding a center more distinct, which will be beneficial moving forward. Once we receive confirmation of reimbursement, I will purchase eight foam-tiles (two four-packs) for ~$40. The tiles I'm looking at have the same area as Tyler (each tile is 2 ft^2), meaning we will get ample coverage on which to run future tests.

Unfortunately, of the eight tiles available, we can only make use of two at a time. There is an issue with power not flowing to the third tile in a chain and onward. The tiles are ordered, and Tactonic (the company that makes these tiles) claims that the tiles must be connected in that order, but I have been able to power and gather data from two tiles that are not necessarily in that order.

Despite the powering issue, I have produced a video of myself walking across the two available tiles. This demonstrates in a small space what the pattern of a walking gait can look like.

Looking forward over the next year, one goal is to take the data from Tyler and perform pattern-matching to recognize different foot orientations, and then to associate sounds with different patterns. The end goal is, in lieu of having a prosthetic foot and a foot-shaped pressure sensor, to use the pressure patterns observed by Tyler to create an auditory adaptation of a foot's sense of touch.

The first stage in this is to create a strategy for 1) determining a single group of points that represents pressure being exerted on multiple sensels (such as the ball or heel of the foot) and 2) determining whether or not two or more groups make up a single object exerting pressure on the sensel grid (such as the ball and heel of one foot). This will likely occupy the next few weeks of my work.

The other long-term goal is facilitating a move to distributed processing of Dr. Remy's evolutionary algorithm. Over the next few weeks, I will brush up on SSH, Pythons multiprocessing library, and the workings of evolutionary algorithms.