MoodCube

Inspiration

There is a variety of ways that emotion is expressed. These include, body movements, auditory vocalisation, verbal communication and facial expressions. We all have an awareness of the huge sensory-emotional connection when we feel feelings in both our body and mind. From our teams personal and professional experience of Autism there is a particularly relevant overlap in the community due to the diagnostic sensory processing issues and communication deficits. Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) tools are systems in place to encourage understanding of more challenging communication. Building on research ideas and feasibility studies, MoodCube forms a unique AAC device using the sensory-emotional overlap to help express feelings that are harder to pin down.

What it does

MoodCube is a physical cube with multiple tactile, visual and auditory inputs and outputs. This interactive cube can be played with or encouraged to be used with an aim to express a feeling. Particularly in the latter, the tech comes in to show a loose prediction of the emotion based on the sensory expressions with the cube. If it's not quite right you can cycle through a list of similar words and see if one gets it spot on!

How we built it

Starting with a team brainstorming session, sketches, diagrams, and plans got built from research we found. From our sketches we designed a case on Fusion360 and got the 3D printing started while we worked on technical hardware for our circuit design. Bringing the hack to a close, we gathered our Arduino code and connected all dots to fit everything together and put all the tech inside the cube.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was the lack of resources we had at hand. We had to make creative use of joysticks, potentiometers and buttons to make a functional product. Due to this, fitting component inside to device became a huge struggle with shorts to fix and no soldering available to fix them. Doing all this hardware problem solving in time proved a difficulty like nothing we've had in a hack before!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The 3D modelling being a success and getting more confident with hardware techniques are great accomplishments for our team. Managing to solve so many problems with such limited resources is such a thing we feel proud of! Having a product close to our plans was a huge surprise and one we are very happy to have achieved!

What we learned

We as a team learnt, 3D modelling, 3D printing, Arduino, DIY, making circuits without solder, many different and new components, and how great our teammates are!

What's next for MoodCube

A prototype with correct components would be a great start! Moving on from that we believe this product could have a significant positive impact on many people, of all neurotypes, when perfected. It would be incredible to have the product learn from its user to develop more accurate guesses to mean it is a bespoke product for every communicator.

Built With

• arduino
• autodesk-fusion-360
• c++
• ultimaker