Week in Review - 30th March 2015

This week has largely been dedicated to FATKAT, which had its second outing today. On Monday Will Shaw and I went down to the lab, and put the revised model of FATKAT through its paces. That meant

1) Replacing the accelerometers - the prototype had two different models of accelerometer (thanks to the need for a last minute field replacement when the demoing to the International Spinal Research Trust), so I wanted to install two that we knew to be identical. It makes the processing software a lot easier to maintain, since the same pins refer to the same axes for both hands!

2) Replacing the protoboard with soldered circuitry - I'd used a protoboard for the amplifier circuitry (needed to get a decent resolution out of the force sensors), because I didn't know what gain we would need, and wanted to be able to easily change the resistors, without resorting to a variable resistor (that might then be inadvertently adjusted, etc). The protoboard was a real weak link, though - wires popped out, and needed replacing. Fine when I'm on hand to plug them back in, but not really sustainable if FATKAT is to be used by other people. Then I had the brainwave of using screw terminals to attach the resistors, so they could still be changed without the need to undo soldering, and so it was - a more permanent, soldered version of the circuitry was put together:

3) Trying the new calibration procedure and rewriting the calibration code in LabVIEW - this now seems to be working. My hope is that we'll only need to calibrate when hardware changes are made, but for now, the calibration process is a protection against wires being plugged in the wrong way round.

4) Having a few practice runs - we tried a few lifts each with 200g weights, and a few with 400g weights, then we each tried a slip force run (basically, picking the manipulandum up, holding it for a moment, then gradually releasing the force until it slips from the hand - this tells you the minimum force required to generate enough friction to hold it). The force trace is below:

It's coming out nice - you can see Will grips a lot harder than I do, but the slip force (last point before the force nose dives as the force sensor slips out of the hand) is very similar, which is what you'd expect.

And that's really been most of the week. The other big news was a PACLab strategy meeting, where we discussed global priorities, and how we wanted to take our various streams of work forwards and (just as important) how we communicate that work internally and externally. We haven't yet arrived at a finalised plan, but we're off to a good start. The three streams (Surgery, Developmental Research, and Rehabilitation/Mobility) are getting their websites planned out, and we'll be doing some technology roadmaps in the near future to look at what engineering Pete Culmer and I need to do to enable the next round of 4* REF outputs in time for REF2020.

I'm looking at grasp planning literature to underpin a paper that Mark Mon-Williams, Rachel Coats and I are writing.

I've also booked my flights for the next LUDI meeting - now confirmed for the first week of June in Limassol, Cyprus.

Last of all (outside work, admittedly - but relevant to the "Engineering Imagination"), I've been down at Leeds Hackspace, building my Raspberry Pi Camera system (complete with TFT screen. It's looking good. No preview shows as yet, so the aiming is a bit hit and miss, as you can see - but I'm well on my way to time-lapse photography, and some fresh computer vision projects...

 

 

Put like that, I actually got quite a lot done this week. Maybe this weekly review stuff will really work! Anyway, next week will be a lot less productive - Easter Bank Holiday, annual leave to look after my daughter (who's off school) will eat into most of the time. So I don't intend to start anything new - there are a bunch of things coming onto my desk (or back onto my desk) the week after, but for now, it's all about tidying up FATKAT, working on that paper, and brushing up the Pathways to Impact for my Fellowship application. Let's see how that goes...

 

 

Weekly Updates

It seems like every time I post, I apologise for taking so long to get round to it. I've already noted that Blogging goes invariably to the bottom of the To Do list - posts are slowly crafted over a long period, and finally uploaded after many long delays. I've also noted that Twitter is quite a good way of addressing this - activities and thoughts can be shared quickly, albeit in little depth. Part of the reason for this is that I try to address fairly lengthy topics - approaching each post almost as if it were an article in its own right. I'm the same with emails - I start to compose lengthy replies, and it takes a week or two to respond to someone. On email, I'm trying to address this by giving short, immediate responses (even if it just says "Thanks - it'll be a week or two before I can look at this"). At least that way, people know I've received their email, and I'm not just ignoring them.

A blog is a little bit different. There seems to be little point in me popping up every week or two just to say "Busy - will write more soon!", so I thought I'd try posting short, regular updates about what I've been busy doing. Part of the inspiration for this was the observation from a colleague that we don't do enough to celebrate our achievements: once we've got something done, we tend to move onto the next item on the To Do list, and the focus is forever on how far behind we are - what still needs to be done, not on what has actually been achieved. Twitter helps - a day of FATKAT testing results in a short stream of tweets, which is a nice way of shouting about it, but I thought, since I always try to take a bit of time to look back and forwards at the end of each week, I might as well share this via the Blog. That isn't to say that larger Blog posts will go the journey (I see this as an addition, rather than a replacement), but it's a good way of actually showing that the Blog is alive, rather than abandoned. We'll see how it goes!

What I Did in My Non-Holidays

Time management is a harsh mistress, and one of the things you have to learn in academia is that there are some times of the year when you're going to be rushed off your feet. Late January to early March is such a time - Open Days take up a full day every week, semester 1 exams and coursework have to be marked, Semester 2 teaching has to be set - the first round of semester 2 coursework has to be marked, our internal interim exhibition for the final year Product Design students has to be assessed, and it's not like the other responsibilities (PhD Students to supervise, seminars to attend, grant proposals to write, ethics applications to review, a Product Design programme to manage, visiting lecturers to look after). Now, none of these things are bad - even when they aren't fun, they're satisfying - but they are immoveable. And that means that everything else that you want to do has to fit in around them - so you have to be selective about what you go for. Opportunities crop up - seminars to attend, dedicated calls for proposals, research tools to develop. And some inevitably have to be kicked into touch for a period. You have to learn not to beat yourself up about that - and you have to make sure you sit down and take stock once the rush is over, so you know where you're going next. And blogging is a good place to sit down and work out those thoughts, and take stock.

Blogging is bottom of the pile during a busy period, of course, hence the lengthy radio silence. All the neat arduino and Raspberry Pi experiments I had planned have also been rested (my Raspberry Pi 2 has yet to be even turned on, over a month after ordering it on the day it was announced, and despite driving specially to the DPD depot so I could have it as early as possible!). I haven't gone near Python for a couple of months, except by proxy (PhD student Oscar Giles is doing some sterling work on implementing Bayesian Statistics on his work looking at interceptive tasks in children). But as you will know if you follow my Twitter feed, I have not been idle, nor have I been entirely swamped with teaching and admin. Indeed Twitter, as a micro-blogging service, is certainly proving its worth there - a photo or short notice can be pinged off in seconds. Blog posts take me at about an hour, and that's not allowing for the time spent mulling over what to say. And for the last few months, my free time has been given to the things that I have prioritised ahead of blogging.

I've been hard at work on FATKAT - the Finger and Thumb Kinetic Assessment Tool, which has now seen its first test run. Sarah Astill, Will Shaw and I got together to actually put it through its paces - and gather some initial data to try out the data processing algorithms, and initial results have been good. We'll be back in the lab later in the month to try the refined version, but I'm excited to have that up and running, and I'm hoping to provide a fuller overview of the system in a future post!

I've also joined the Leeds Hackspace, something I've been meaning to do for a while - lots of little projects on the go, and I'm hoping this will a) force me to benchmark time to actually work them, even if it's only once every couple of weeks; and b) give me a more social space to do it in - rather than sitting alone in my study!

I've got my little 4tronix robot base kit working, ready to start plugging it into my Raspberry Pi, and adding some sensors. The goal eventually is to turn it into a more "tangible" version of Button Bash - rather than just having an icon on a screen, having a buggy that could physically drive around would make for an interesting project. I was inspired by Kim Adams and Pedro Encarnacao with their Lego Mindstorm manipulators, and I'm also hoping that I can tap up some of the autonomous vehicle expertise here at Leeds to see if we can make it robust to poor control. That's largely for the future, though - right now, I just have a buggy that drives around under the code provided by Initio.

And where next? Well, there are a few things on the horizon. Communication Matters have just arrived at the Innovation Centre here at Leeds that's going to offer some exciting potential for collaboration. FATKAT will of course, be continuing in its development, and that I think will be the lion's share of where my spare capacity goes. I'm also trying to get an iDRO journal club set up - wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted!

Long time, no see...

Two months since my last post. What happened to January? Familial illness, mostly - three different maladies have worked their way through Clan Holt, necessitating days off work, school and nursery (and days off work to look after children who are off school and nursery), which combined with exam marking, launching new modules, running Applicant Days, as well as writing grants and papers, and supporting PhD students coming up to the finish line on their PhDs have all pushed blogging to the bottom of the pile. The arrival of the Raspberry Pi 2 didn't help either.

Still, things are calming down at last, and opportunities to write blog posts are starting to bubble up again, so hopefully you'll be hearing more from me in the coming weeks!

It's also worth saying that 2014 came to a sad end, with Bipin Bhakta (the driving force behind the rehabilitation bit of our rehabilitation robotics bit, and the man who first got me working on user-centred design with children, and so effectively shaped my entire career from 2006 onwards) and Gert Jan Gelderblom (leader of the working group I belong to in LUDI, and a prominent figure in that network), both passing away during December. I'll miss them both. God rest.

Merry Christmas one and all...

Well,  I'd had it in mind to write two blog posts before the end of the year (other than one to say "Merry Christmas"): one on the robotics facility launch,  and one on FATKAT - the Finger and Thumb Kinetic Assessment tool (the device formerly known as "the manipulandum").

But as ever,  my posting plans have gang aglee, due to the end of term rush and the need to nurse two theses to submission, and away days and grant proposals. Somehow, blog posts are always bottom of the list! But I say that every time,  if course.

Suffice to say that in January I'll give a 2014 retrospective and see how things figured out against the goals I set last January: and what I hope will come out of 2015. And I'll give you that long awaited  FATKAT update.

For now,  this is just a placeholder to remind you that the blog is still alive, I haven't forgotten it - and of course, to wish you all a Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

And in true Columbo fashion, there's just one more thing: you should really,  really check out the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year.  They are given by the University of Manchester's Danielle George, and is all about Hacking the Home. They chime nicely with the Calderdale event I blogged about from September,  and she hits the notes on playfulness and experimentation that have got me so excited in my recent discussions on the Maker Movement.

And if that doesn't tempt you,  then surely the prospect of a robot orchestra playing the Dr Who theme (inspired by and including our very own Dr Andy Jackson's robo-bass player!) will. I'm looking forward to it!

Anyway, peace and goodwill to all men,  women and robots: I'm signing of to eat mince pies,  turkey and Christmas pud, and keep my fingers crossed that Santa's got a wi-fi adapter and TFT touchscreen for my Raspberry Pi.

Enjoy!

LUDI

Teaching term is always a busy time - especially around this mid-term point. Work set in the first half of term must be marked, while other projects are just starting off, and lectures still need to be delivered. Still, I managed to find time to attend the first full meeting of the LUDI network in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania at the back end of October. Of course, if you've been following my Twitter feed, you'll already know that, since I tweeted pretty much the whole event, including some snaps of Vilnius.

First up, a little background. LUDI is an EU COST (Co-ordination on Science and Technology) action. It isn't a research grant exactly - it doesn't pay for any research to be undertaken. Instead, as the name suggests, it's all about co-ordination: create a network, surveying current research to identify gaps and so create the opportunities for future research collaborations. LUDI's focus is on play for disabled children. I won't give you all the details: you can find some details on the COST website, and at LUDI's own website, which will be kept up-to-date with the network's activities.

LUDI is concerned with play for play's sake, not play-like activities: so no therapeutic play - just play as an end in itself. So from my projects, Together Through Play is in; myPAM is out. Which isn't to say that play-like activities are bad, or irrelevant, just that play for play's sake in disabled children has so far received a lot less attention.

There are four working groups (WG), looking at the definition and major concepts of play (WG1); technologies for enabling play (WG2 - that's the one I'm in!), the current context of play for disabled children (WG3 - my colleague, Angharad Beckett from Sociology is leading this one!) and looking at the aspirations and views of children and parents (WG4). My working group is looking to compile a database of systems that have been used for enabling play, and what evaluation has been undertaken of them.

Of course, the real benefit of these things is that you get to find out about other research and spend some time really thinking about and discussing new ideas. Here are a few of the really interesting things that stood out for me.

First and foremost, that play is the goal, and learning is incidental - a point made by Playware's Jari Due Jessen. We learn and practice skills in order to play - not the other way round. It's easy to put the cart before the horse, especially with educational, therapeutic and even accessible games or toys. The problem is that if the goal isn't play but something else, then the motivation often isn't there. That has significant implications for Button Bash, and the Together Through Play - did we overemphasize accessibility at the expense of playfulness? Could we have done more to find both?

This was neatly captured by the second thing that stood out for me: Prof. Anita Bundy's (of Sydney University) Test of Playfulness, which provided a framework for observing how playful children were. This captures the main ingredients of play (level of control, suspension of reality, source of motivation, and framing), and provides a neat way of thinking through the whole issue of what play is. It emphasises the creative aspect, and the ability to choose freely - that's interesting, because many videogames are the exact opposite. Not all, of course, and there's a reason why "sandbox" games have become so popular - but even so. Options are limited to a pre-defined set, and simple control schemes tend to limit options even further.

The Test of Playfulness also appeared in the third item of note: the work of Kim Adams, Adriana Rios and Pedro Encarnação - who have been doing some interesting work using a Lego Mindstorms based manipulator, that allows children to interact with their environment through switch control. Fascinating stuff - and particularly interesting because it focuses on extending the agency of the child into the environment, allowing them to use it in surprising and playful ways.

All told, a really interesting time, and it's left me with lots of food for thought! More as it comes.

Hack the Home Halifax!

You can tell teaching has resumed - I'm pretty sure yesterday was late September, and yet here we are - a quarter of the way into term! The blog, as ever, goes to the bottom of the To Do List, despite a steady accumulation of things to add. But with new lectures all written, exam nearly ready, upcoming trip to Lithuania for the LUDI workshop sorted out, projects allocated, a PhD thesis examined, another reviewed - time has finally turned up when I can actually get down to some more Blogging.

What I wanted to reflect on today was the Hack the Home event that ran in Halifax with Calderdale Council, FutureGov and Enabled by Design last month. I've been following the Enabled by Design Designathons from their inception, so I jumped at the chance to get involved and provide technical support.

 

The event was taking place at the mighty Dean Clough Mills in Halifax. I have a soft spot for Halifax. Not least because you get some spectacular views, but also because Eureka,  the Children's Museum is there ( and very handy from the Station!), and one of my favourite  bands (not-so-popular beat combo and pioneers of Gothic Metal,  Paradise Lost) hail from the City.

 

If you're not familiar with the Designathon concept, it's this: you get a group of service users and staff from Calderdale Council, put them together with designers, and get them to brainstorm solutions to the service users' problems. Prototyping and testing is a huge part of this, since ideas that sound good on paper don't always work out in practice. Normally, the Designathon lasts two days, giving time to make higher fidelity prototypes to test out on the second day. In this case, only one day was available,  so low fidelity prototypes were the order of the day. But you learn a lot through lo-fi prototyping and testing, and part of the goal was to introduce the concepts of user-centred design, rapid prototyping and  bespoke manufacturing to Calderdale. Calderdale Council have a big push on digital innovation, and they're aware that they have a really strong manufacturing base that can provide these services. The big question for them is how they can bring together these businesses,  their clients and the R&D activities of nearby Universities, which was why they had brought Futuregov and Enabled by Design in.

 

It was a good day. We had five service users, and about forty-five participants from Calderdale Council and local creative (including my colleague Dan Trowsdale from the University of Leeds, and two of our students). This gave five teams of ten, to brainstorm around each user's problems (including the user themselves), each with a facilitator from FutureGov, plus technical support from Mike Willshaw from Radius Creatives (whose 3D printer was a huge hit), and my good self.  There was a lot of energy, and I was really pleased by the way everyone rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. Everyone got into the swing of sketching and model making, which was a relief - there's always the worry that people will be too shy.

 

It's difficult to convey the whole thing in words. Suffice to say it was an exciting day, and a great opportunity to establish links with Calderdale Council on which we hope to build in the future - we're already looking at getting some projects together to address their needs, and hopefully this is the first step in an ongoing partnership. It was also great to meet the FutureGov chaps (particularly Marc Barto, with who had been tirelessly working to set the event up!), and Denise Stephens who set up Enabled by Design. I had some really good chats with service user David Jacques and dedicated biker Andrew Evans, who introduced me to the "Nippi". Both were really excited by the opportunities this opened up.

 

Also - and it's a big also - I was reminded that actually, designing is something that everyone can do. And I was also struck by something that Andrew said: that this wasn't just about design, or about providing a service, but about allowing disabled people to have an active role in designing their environment and future, and take their rightful place in society. Amen to that. I hope we can achieve it.