Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-93). / Playgrounds are special places within the urban landscape specially designed for children. Here, they encounter the outdoors and the physical properties of large spaces through play, which allows children to develop their physical skills, explore the natural and built environment as well as interact with their peers. Even more importantly, children direct their own play activities in playgrounds in an open-ended way. As digital technologies become increasingly present in children's lives an important question arises regarding their role in playgrounds. This thesis contributes to playground design in a meaningful way by exploring how digital technologies can enhance children's open-ended and physically active play in outdoor settings. Can animated playground props support and possibly enhance open-ended and physically active play in playgrounds? This thesis expands the repertoire of objects conceived specifically for children's outdoor play environments through a review of existing technologies and designs followed by a design exploration with a new category of animated playground prop. I develop an ecological approach to children's digital playground props which takes into account the links among children <--> props <--> play settings. / In playing with objects, children gather information about the physical characteristics and embedded meanings of their three-dimensional surroundings. In other words, children's interactions with play props are one lens for experiencing the world. This theoretical framework leads me to a new category of animated prop called "space explorer". The thesis describes a design process for one prop, an autonomous, pneumatic playground ball which is part of the "space explorers" category. The method combines design development with input from children in two workshops about their playground and specific objects. The design and research exploration concludes with reflections and recommendations for future attempts to design more autonomous and responsive objects which can enrich children's outdoor play experiences. / by Susanne Seitinger. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-111). / Electronic media have lagged behind their paper progenitors in the clear, usable display of large bodies of information. New visual languages have been created for information display which exploit the computer's unique ability to render dynamic and three-dimensional typography. These languages demonstrate that the use of three dimensional form, expressive movement, visual focus and layering, in harmony with human perceptual abilities, improve navigation and contextual understanding of complex written documents. This thesis shows that graphic displays can be combined with physical interfaces to create interactions with purely typographic information that are rich, tactile and humane. / David L. Small. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73). / People's daily lives are impacted by lots of dynamic environmental information, such as weather and traffic. Though most of this information is available on the Internet, there is no easy way for someone to access it while in a mobile state. More importantly, people do not have a constant need for this kind of information unless there is a significant change that may impact their current or future activities. This thesis creates a distributed multi-agent architecture that uses GPS-enabled cell phones to build a mobile service development framework. The goal of this framework is to build mobile services to deliver timely changes in environmental information that could impact a user's current or future activities. A weather warning system for bicycle riders is built based on this framework to demonstrate its utility. This weather warning system tracks bicycle riders as well as current weather patterns; it warns riders about the risk of getting caught in the rain if it estimates that riders are heading into areas where rain is predicted, or if they are moving too far from shelter to be able to reach it before the rain starts. With this system, bike riders can make more informed decisions about which routes to take to avoid encounters with nasty weather conditions. The objective of this research is: 1) to examine the feasibility of using agent techniques and GPS-enabled cell phones to create the mobile service development framework, and 2) to investigate the new generation of location-based services in which the movement and status changes of multiple targets are considered. / by Chao-Chi Chang. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103) and index. / by Freedom Baird. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, September 1999. / "August 1999." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-73). / A colony of social insects as a whole can be regarded as an organism that reproduces, maintains its internal structure, and survives in a hostile an unpredictable environment. Such superorganism - an entity that consists of smaller component organisms - is able to perform remarkable feats, decentralized information processing among them. For instance, a swarm of bees is able to choose the best possible nesting cavity even though only a few of the individuals have any knowledge of the available sites, and no single bee has a full knowledge of the situation. This decentralized decision making is remarkably similar to that performed by hypothetical functional agents, frequently featured in decentralist theories of the human mind. In this thesis I argue that comparing a superorganism to the mind is useful. In particular, this comparison opens up an enchanting opportunity for the creation of expressive synthetic characters that may become important incremental stepping stones on the way to complex artificial intelligence. In order to explore the space between metaphors - the human mind as a collection of interconnected mindless agents, and the superorganism as a unitary whole that exhibits functional characteristics beyond those of its component parts - I present the design and implementation of the Mask of the Hive, a character that is based on a model of a bee colony. My emphasis lies on graphic design and information visualization in order to develop a set of visuals that are informative, expressive, and artistically satisfying. / by Michal Hlavac. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101). / This research presents novel techniques for acoustic-source location for both actively triggered, and passively detected signals using pervasive, distributed networks of devices, and investigates the combination of existing resources available in personal electronics to build a digital sensing 'commons'. By connecting personal resources with those of the people nearby, tasks can be achieved, through distributed placement and statistical improvement, that a single device could not do alone. The utility and benefits of spatio-temporal acoustic sensing are presented, in the context of ubiquitous computing and machine listening history. An active audio self-localisation algorithm is described which is effective in distributed sensor networks even if only coarse temporal synchronisation can be established. Pseudo-noise 'chirps' are emitted and recorded at each of the nodes. Pair-wise distances are calculated by comparing the difference in the audio delays between the peaks measured in each recording. By removing dependence on fine grained temporal synchronisation it is hoped that this technique can be used concurrently across a wide range of devices to better leverage the existing audio sensing resources that surround us. / (cont.) A passive acoustic source location estimation method is then derived which is suited to the microphone resources of network-connected heterogeneous devices containing asynchronous processors and uncalibrated sensors. Under these constraints position coordinates must be simultaneously determined for pairs of sounds and recorded at each microphone to form a chain of acoustic events. It is shown that an iterative, numerical least-squares estimator can be used. Initial position estimates of the source pair can be first found from the previous estimate in the chain and a closed-form least squares approach, improving the convergence rate of the second step. Implementations of these methods using the Smart Architectural Surfaces development platform are described and assessed. The viability of the active ranging technique is further demonstrated in a mixed-device ad-hoc sensor network case using existing off-the-shelf technology. Finally, drawing on human-centric onset detection as a means of discovering suitable sound features, to be passed between nodes for comparison, the extension of the source location algorithm beyond the use of pseudo-noise test sounds to enable the location of extraneous noises and acoustic streams is discussed for further study. / Benjamin Christopher Dalton. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53). / by John David Sutter. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-165). / With a new way of thinking about organizing sensor networks, we demonstrate that we can more easily deploy and program these networks to solve a variety of different problems. We describe sensor networks that can analyze and actuate distributed phenomena without a central coordinator. Previous implementations of sensor networks have approached the problem from the perspective of centralized reporting of distributed events. By contrast, we create a system that allows users to infer the global state from within the sensor network itself, rather than by accessing an outside, central middleware layer. This is accomplished via dynamic creation of clusters of nodes based on application or intent, rather than proximity. The data collected and returned by these clusters is returned directly to the inquirer at his current location. By creating this Distributed-in/Distributed-out (DiDo) system that bypasses a middleware layer, our networks have the principal advantage of being easily configurable and deployable. We show that a system with this structure can solve path problems in a random graph. These graph problems are directly applicable to real-life applications such as discovering escape routes for people in a building with changing pathways. We show that the system is scalable, as reconfiguration requires only local communication. / (cont.) To test our assumptions, we build a suite of applications to create different deployment scenarios that model the physical world and set up simulations that allow us to measure performance. Finally, we create a set of simple primitives that serve as a high-level organizing protocol. These primitives can be used to solve different problems with distributed sensors, regardless of the underlying network protocols. The instructions provided by the sensors result in tangible performance improvements when the sensors' instructions are directed to agents within a simulated physical world. / by Constantine Kleomenis Christakos. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70). / Self-Cam is a wearable camera system that allows a person to collect video and audio from the movements of her own head and face. Like looking in a mirror, live feedback or video playback from the camera can be used to experience and learn how you look to others. Video playback and analysis tools can also be used to review and learn how others wearing the Self-Cam express themselves to you. We are developing a tool to teach the kind of facial analysis that an empathetic person might notice in interpretation of everyday interaction. Because it works from real life experience from a single person's point of view, we hypothesize that this analysis of self and immediate social environment will help the process of generalization of facial expression and mental state inference for that person, giving them a better understanding of the significance of facial movements and improvement in recognition of social cues. As steps toward this investigation, this thesis constructs a wearable camera system, designs a process of expression collection and analysis, and develops and implements a video test to evaluate the recognition abilities of study subjects throughout the investigation. Preliminary results show a great difference in ability between individual autistic subjects, some of whom approach the abilities of well scoring neurotypical individuals. / by Alea Chandler Teeters. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-76). / by Scott Clark Higgins. / M.S.