This Place Is Cool

By: Megan Tennermann

One night in December of 1996, a midnight coffee run to Kimmel Food Court on the SU campus took me past an old fraternity house with a movie screen on the front showing Fantasia. Enthralled as always by Disney films, I sat down in the snow with a goofy smile on my face and watched to the end, despite the lack of sound. I walked away that night thinking, "This is cool." That was my introduction to the Center for Really Neat Research, at 500 University Place, and despite my fascination with and attraction to the place, it's taken me two years to get back.

Wednesday night brought me back. My friend Sarah had seen a flyer advertising an open house, featuring a demonstration of a new Lego system that incorporates a computer brain into the structure. This kid-at- heart is also totally enthralled by Legos, so when she mentioned it, I decided to go. I'm very glad I did.

The Center for Really Neat Research was founded in the fall of 1996 by Dave Warner, who is also the current director. According to an information sheet I got while I was there, the goals of the Center are defined as follows:

1. "Create an environment for cultivating awareness of and experimentation with communication interface technologies (i.e. how humans interact with computers.)"

2. "Cause as much interaction among interested people around these ideas and technologies as possible"

3. "Take these results and continually prototype models for present and future communications using cutting-edge computational and Internet resources."

The focus of the "really neat research" is on improving the quality of life for children with severe disabilities. Again quoting from the information sheet, "Working with severly disabled children early on alerted us to a potential for social good..."

"There's always something new to work on," said Tav Hawkins, one of the resident researchers of the Center. She was kind enough to show off several projects currently in development. Among them was a retractable computer monitor. Attached to a crane arm, this project is designed for use by people in wheelchairs, who often cannot adjust the monitor to an acceptable height. Another project that she explained looked like a dentist's chair with stress balls attached to the ends of the chair arms, but was introduced as an interactive keyboard. The stress balls were actually interfaced with the computer and depending on the position of the ball and the place on the surface of the ball that gets pressed, a different character would be communicated to the computer brain. It works just like a regular keyboard, although much easier for a disabled child to deal with.

Matt Carbone, a 1997 graduate of SU's College of Visual and Performing Arts with a degree in Industrial Design and also a resident researcher at the Center, introduced several of the other projects. I got to experiment with one of the devices designed to make communication easier for quadriplegics. The device reminded me of my orthodontic headgear from eighth grade, but was actually a system of sensors attached to various muscles on my face. The sensors recorded every twitch of my facial muscles and transmitted them to a computer, which in this case transferred them to a remote control car. I never really got the hang of it (the car kept crashing into table legs and stopping unaccountably), but the quadriplegic teenager who is one of the major case studies of the Center is said to be quite expert with his device.

Matt also introduced the Magic R.U.G. (Robust Underfoot Gadget)> 1-foot-square sensors are placed underneath one of those brightly colored alphabet rugs that we all had in our kindergarten classrooms. When any pressure is put on the sensors, a signal is transmitted that then translates into sound or light or whatever. It "can be used to teach letters and numbers and shapes with sound and physical interaction." (I'm quoting from the info sheets again).

And then, the Legos. Released in September of this year, the new Lego system consists of a computer brain encased in a Lego brick. It's a fairly large Lego brick, probably about 2x3 inches, and once you've built your device (the one we saw had wheels and arms out front that looked like a snowplow), you hook it up to your computer and download a program that tells it what to do. This one had sensors in the arms that told it when it had bumped into something or had gone below a certain level, so it would never fall off a table or anything.

Which brings us to the contest. The Center is sponsoring a contest for the coolest thing that can be built with the new Legos. I'll give you details as I get them. For now, go visit the people at 500 University Place. It's just cool.