Gogh Bike
Gogh Bike is a a collaborative tool for creative expression I developed with Ben Cohen and K. Joyce Tsai for Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces. To use Gogh Bike one person rides the bike to create brush strokes on a projected canvas. Another person uses colored light to mix paint colors into a bucket on bike's cargo rack. This sets up an environment where two people have to work together on their creation.
Gogh Bike takes advantage of a variety of bicycle inputs like the speed a person is pedaling, steering, and use of the brake. The paint can itself senses "pouring" light from sample buckets. The prototype uses three Arduino microcontrollers connected to a computer running Processing. I wrote most of the Java code and designed the color light detection mechanism.
Here are some other resources for more information:
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A user rides the Gogh Bike prototype during an exhibition while another fills the rear paint can with yellow paint. Photo courtesy of Nathan Yan.
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Creations made by users testing Gogh Bike. In addition to translating the bicycle's movement to the canvas, the program records the movements so they can be replayed at a later time.
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The paint can contains a color light sensor and four sets of red-green-blue LEDs to indicate what color paint the bike is using, as well as how much remains.
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Users can mix colors into the bicycle's paint can using buckets that project colored light. We decided to use red, yellow, and blue because people have a much better intuitive sense of how to mix these than the primary colors of light, red, green, and blue.
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A user is experimenting with the Gogh Bike controls to produce abstract strokes on a projected canvas. Ideally the canvas would be projected on the floor. In a later version of Gogh Bike the software rotates the canvas with the bicycle's steering, better mimicking the perspective of a person riding the bike.
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The prototype bike is connected to a stationary trainer. It is equipped with a photosensor to detect brake use, a potentiometer to detect steering, and a reed switch combined with magnets to detect wheel rotation. The paint can is mounted on a cargo rack over the rear wheel.