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ALFI stands for Animatronic Lego Face for Interaction. He was created during my spring semester of 2009 as a final senior project. This project was part of a CS250H, with Franklyn Turbak as my advisor; Robbie Berg from the Physics department also advised on this project.

ALFI's roots are in the wintersession project that I undertook with my friend Voula. The design and coding of ALFI all stem from both the failures and the successes of those initial robots; failures were rectified and successes were expounded upon (or simply left alone, no sense fixing what isn't broken.)

The initial aim of this spring project was to create a piece of art that would interact with the viewer; this aim was created under the hypothesis that the viewer's response to the piece would change given the fact that the piece is responding to the viewer. Due to design changes during the process of creating ALFI, the focus on ALFI as art was downplayed; this didn't mean that the core concept of the initial aim was changed. A viewer will still have a different response based on how an object is interacting with them.

ALFI's Behaviors

ALFI's interactions are based on how he interprets his environment. If he detects movement (in the form of his light sensors detecting shadows), he transitions between states; the same goes for if no movement is detected. These transitions can be explained by the accompanying state diagram. When no movement is detected, ALFI remains in his initial state "sleep," which has been circled. If movement is detected in this initial state, ALFI transitions to "alert." If movement is detected, ALFI remains in the "alert" state; if no movement is detected, ALFI transitions to the "bored" state. If movement is detected in this new state, ALFI transitions back the the "alert" state; if no movement is detected within twenty seconds, ALFI transitions to the "sleep" state, the final state of a complete interaction cycle.

Each state is characterized by different behaviors. The "sleep" state is characterized by down-turned ears, closed eye lids, and a closed mouth. The "alert" state is characterized by up-turned ears, an open mouth, wide open eye lids, and eyes that follow movement; this state also has blinks that occur every 5 seconds and random ear wiggles. The "bored" state is characterized by down-turned ears, a closed mouth, half open eye lids, and eyes that only look forward; this state also has blinks that occur every 5 seconds, as well as random ear wiggles and yawns.

The process of creating ALFI is detailed through the pages on this site and the final project result is also shown.

Last Modified: May 25, 2009