Project 1 – Human limb movements

Sometimes people make physical movements that they are not even aware of when they are unconscious. This project uses Arduino to do data measurement and visualize and analyze the data.

Overview

I gathered from the brief that the goal of this project is to analyse and show facts and information around me through visual design. So I concentrated on my life path in Southampton and presented the ultimate results.

David Hunter’s workshop

My partners and I first conducted data gathering experiments with the help of three basic and practical gadgets provided by David.

截屏2021-09-01 上午3.45.56

Because I was in self isolation at that time, I could only take two random steps in the room to measure the number of items I saw in the room.

MY inspiration

 

I have done a lot of research on Arduino measurement data and some Arduino digital instruments. In fact, there are many similar interesting small experiments and scientific intelligent instruments. The pictures are in order:

1、Star Wars

2、Coke Piano

3、Led Table

4、Arduino Ball

5、Chess

6、CNC

7、Box Plotclock

8、Pov Arduino mini

9、Hand

10、Micro Servo Robot

11、Plano vs Arduino

Kinect + Arduino, creating “somatosensory remote control helicopter” [open source]

We all used to play remote-controlled airplanes when we were children, but it’s rare to use the body to control helicopters. Today, this open source project, somatosensory remote-controlled helicopter, is brought to you. It uses Kinect to collect the posture information of the human body, and then sends messages to Arduino through the serial port. Arduino can control the helicopter by controlling the potential of the remote controller. This project is very suitable for Arduino researchers.

    According to the operating conditions of the instrument, connect the Arduino motherboard and measuring accessories, and connect the computer

To measure human leg shaking data, it is necessary to measure the up and down displacement, left and right movement displacement, and back and forth movement displacement of the shaking leg. Tie the instrument to the leg and start timing. The measured data is the data obtained when each leg shaking action occurs. This data will be transmitted directly from the Arduino motherboard to the computer.

After connecting to the computer, the Arduino computer needs to run portable coding, and the data measurement can be run after the code is written. As shown in the figure below.

Start data collection。The following are all the collected data, including X, y and z-axis data, which respectively represent the up and down movement distance data of shaking legs, left and right movement distance data, and front and rear movement distance data.

After all the data is poured into python, Python is used for data processing and sorting, and plot is used to analyze the data change track.

As shown in the figure, the data change shown in the figure is the direction of “X” axis, that is, when shaking legs, the front and back positions change.

It is possible that during work, the brain unconsciously controls the body movements. When the legs shake up and down, the body moves forward or backward due to the change of sitting position or the pause of shaking the legs.

The left line grapf shows that the subject’s movements did not change the front and back positions at the beginning of leg shaking. The leg was only shaking up and down or left and right. Then, in about ten minutes, the position moved forward part of the whole, and then about ten minutes later, the position moved forward part of the whole again. It can be concluded that the leg shaking move- -ment in work will move forward with the passage of time.

 

The chart on the right shows the “Y” axis movement track of the leg shaking action, that is, the left and right directions of the leg shaking action. According to the leg shaking data of the subjects, when he started to shake their legs, the trajectory of the leg shaking was relatively regular and single, mostly just shaking the legs up and down. However, when the time went to about 10 minutes, the trajectory of the leg shaking began to change. When the leg started to shake up and down, it started to shake left and right at the same time. It wouldn’t control the single direction of the leg. It kept changing in the up, down, left and right directions, and it could get the conclusion on the condition of continuous leg shaking at work, the leg muscles will start to shake uncontrollably in any direction in about ten minutes.

The figure shows the movement track of “Z” axis, that is, the up and down direction of the shaking leg.

The leg shaking data of the subjects showed that the leg shaking was not going on all the time, there were several obvious pauses, the pause time was long and short, but the longest pause time was about 30 seconds. What actions did the subjects do during these pauses need to be explained by combining the scene captured by the camera and the power data line touching the head.

As shown in the right figure, “X”, “Y” and “Z” motion tracks are combined to observe, and according to the live record of the camera and the power on data of finger touch, the data obtained is analyzed as follows:

In about ten minutes from the beginning, there will be no change in the direction of shaking legs. Keep shaking up and down.

Ten minutes later, the shaking leg starts to increase its strength and change the shaking direction. It will move f orward and start shaking the leg left and right while shaking the leg up and down.

Combined with the working state and video content, when the first stop of leg shaking, the subject was interrupted and had a conversation during thinking, and after returning to the working state, he continued to think, and then began to shake the leg.

Select the data with long pause and the first touch of the head in the figure for specific analysis.

There are three times of touching the head, each time when you go into deep thinking or come up with a good idea, you will stop shaking your legs and start touching your head at the same time. But they are all short-lived. According to the situation that the subject stops or slows down the frequency of shaking legs but does not touch his head during the reaction period, he enters the meditative state (stupor).

In the process of work, study and so on, people need to use their brain and sit still. After entering the state of thinking, the limbs will automatically start some habitual actions, and maintain this action when they are in the state of continuous thinking. But when the problem is not solved and deep thinking is started, the body movement will be stopped and deep thinking will be carried out in the most familiar and comfortable state of the body. This state will last for dozens of seconds.

OUTCOME 1 (BROEF)

First of all, I wanted to make a visual poster using the changes of these data, as shown in the figure below.

After the first tutorial of outcome, I thought the advice given to me by my mentor Jackie was very correct. Because my project itself is much more interesting than the outcome I have made, it will be more interesting for me to shoot a film recording the progress of the project and a dynamic poster GIF.

So I began to think about how to use video to show my interesting experiment.

I wrote a script for my video, did the same experiment again, took photos, learned and practiced video shooting and editing.

Next is my video

播放视频

OUTCOME 2

The second outcome is my GIF dynamic poster display. I have made animation and other elements, as well as data fluctuation elements.

Then the final product.

Through this project, I learned that the display results of the project are as important as the process of the project itself. An interesting result display is needed to reflect the interest of the product itself and the project itself, so I should spend more time on research and do a good job in the final outcome at the same time.

THANK YOU!~~~~