★ 005. through different eyes

Rather than staying in our individual groups, we decided to come together and brainstorm ideas as a team. We analysed the robots we created before the weekend to see what kind of part they could provide. We wanted at least one robot to act as the metronome which could create a steady beat for the duration of the performance. If the robot was to have a spinning motor like we originally planned, if would have to be stationary for the entire performance, and the "drum" would also have to be stationary as well. This caused quite a bit of trouble for us, for there were limitations to this method, such as:

✖ less interaction/movement between robots/characters, which is one of the major factors of Stomp
✖ we would have to make sure the robot nor the drum/bucket moves for the whole time, which gives less space for the other two robots to move
✖ adding to the point above, we'd have to make sure the other two robots do not come in any contact with the metronome robot, in case it moves the position of either the robot or drum/bucket in anyway. This proved to be quite hard since we cannot be exactly sure how the robots will move during the performance, even if we had perfected the scene during a practice run.

We also noticed that it was quite hard for the robots to physically pass objects to one an other, as they had to, well, have a brain. No matter how well we programmed it to pass objects and catch them, it was never going to be perfect every time. So we tried to come up with different approaches. We thought of a few ways in which the robots could produce sound:

✖ Drumming an object (like a bucket) constantly
✖ Adding rice to a container and get one of the robots to hit it/shake it
✖ Lifting objects up and down
✖ Using the wheels as a sound device

This was the first project in BCT which required us work together as such a huge group. We received a lot of different opinions as a result, and although there were times in which not everyone agreed on, it was a good way of accumulating different ideas and opinions from different perspectives. Thus we were able to gather all the best ideas and put them together.