The Future is about Automation
Call it progress, call it laziness, automation will only increase over the next decades. It started with the second industrial revolution nearly 150 years ago, and we are already at the fourth one. In the “Home Automation” project, we focused on automation, but also on the physical home together with the VIVIWARE Cell parts.
We wanted children to become aware of how much a home can be automated. So we went over multiple scenarios that can help our day to day tasks, but also gains in terms of energy savings and time gains.
Do you need to heat your house all night long ? What happens if you forget to switch off lights and heating when you leave during the day? Do you want to come back from work with a cold house? How can you connect your trash, your fridge and your groceries purchases together?
On top of home automation, we wanted children to engage in 3D modelling, and manage to transform the 3D view of a house plan into a 2D model that can be cut and assembled together. Of course, this is not how a house is currently built, but thanks to future 3D printing, we could totally envision walls being “built” and assembled as LEGO to construct a new home. Children generally lack the 3d > 2D transformation, this is why we emphasized on that point.
So now that Home and Automation were defined, we needed to go to the drawing board:
- Draw their favourite house (in 3D)
- Transform the 3D Model into 2D (walls, roof, base) with exact measurements
- Enumerate the different possible automation scenario (no constraints to enable ideation process)
- List all possible sensors and actuators available (cf. supra), and see which scenarios are possible to replicate at a smaller scale
- Describe all retained scenarios in a “logic sentence” : If sensor 1 detects this scenario, then do this … or else do that …
VIVITA is about Innovation For Kids. To do so, over the last couple of years, VIVITA has developed its own hardware to enable children for quick prototyping.
Hence, VIVITA has created the VIVIWARE solution based on several “branches” (physical blocks) connected by simple USB cables. These “branches” are sensors (light, distance and colour measurement, gyroscopic sensors, buttons, joystick … ) or can be actuators (RGB LED, Message board, different types of motors … ).Once these branches are connected, children need to program them using a simple drag and drop interface, allowing them to trigger different behaviours based on other branches’ statuses.
And that’s where the drawing board, with the last step, was important. Thanks to the “logic sentences’ ‘, children are able to understand the different steps of the automation, the start, then outcome, and most importantly the path in between.
How to make the same button (or sensor trigger) a certain move, and the same button/sensor triggers the opposite when done a second time. On paper, this all seems fairly easy, but to understand the logic, and transcribe it into programming blocks can be trickier than you think.
Last but not least, Once the house was built, Children took a lot of time to think how to manage mechanical and physical move (opening a door / window … ) and how to install the different pieces : how shall my door open ? In which direction is the motor moving ? Where should I attach my motor to my home so that my door opens in the correct way ? same for windows ?
Overall, we are very happy that Children developed the following skills:
- Their 2D and 3D modelling skills
- Understanding how automation are triggered by sensors and actuators
- Their programming skills
- How to mix the software world with the physical world
For those of you who want to automate their houses, you can now hire your the experts of their own field — the children — to do that ;)
Text and photos: VIVITA Estonia
