I have some pretty rough sketches of the design of my prototype so far and if anything, receiving any help from anyone seems a bit out of reach. The first step to my plan to be successful was indeed to seek a mentor who knew more than me, had more life experience, and most of all: connections. Life in this world is very strange. The social nature of humans and people of this world are largely based on connections that people establish in their life time. Lucky for me, I had a science Olympiad coach who had me as a student for his first year in the organization. This is lucky since we all know that the first of everything holds a special place in our hearts. Since I was his first student, convincing him to meet up with me was easy. And thus I was able to consult a mentor. At the meeting, I was to tackle the hard part: pitching my idea for approval. Now yes, I found a mentor that knows more than me, however receiving the support of a large company takes care of a lot of problems that I would usually have if i didn't have it. After giving him my packaged deal of what I had plans for, he decided so generously to help me. However, what I didn't expect from this meeting was to receive a possible offer of an internship which was going to be my next step from all of this journey. What I received was a great step in my project. Because of this, I can really start my research to make the prototype which is primarily what I am going to be doing now. I also received some feed back from my mentor saying that there will be challenges to overcome as did my classmates at school, however they all gave their whole hearted positive support. Currently, my status in this project is still researching as the next step. I must find a way to: 1.) assemble the skeleton 2.) find a way to create an input switch for my endoskeleton 3.) learn how to design the 3d model using auto desk inventor (or the programs Viasat has)
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This is the beginning of December, the time of my first blog post. However, this is not the first day of my designs and the solid idea that I have formulated. At first, my idea came up to be a little too extreme. My first idea was to build a keyboard remote that relied on the flexing of specific muscles so that victims of war may survive the technological age and still be able to type, just in a different way. This soon was shot down by almost everyone of my friends, including myself. But this isn't a message about never giving up and always staying on course with total fail because in reality, sometimes your ideas are really just totally out of reach and it's good to listen to peoples advice. Anyway, I looked at my first idea with more reason and I realized that, yeah, i'm really not sure how I am going to be able to develop this kind of technology. So I settled on something a little more in my reach: A remote keyboard that serves comfort to the natural grip of humans. My inspiration comes from the fact that many office worker Americans receive pain in their wrist, forearms, and fingers after long hours of arduous work in a cubicle. My mother being of these people, I wanted to invent, or come close to a keyboard that fits the natural grip and relieves the pain of the locked position that the keyboard in today's world offers. My plan right now is still at the point of designing. Here I drew up a mock design, a very rough concept for myself to polish in the future: Now i'm not the best artist, but from what you can see up above, I laid out a possible orientation for the fingers to type each key with in the traditional keyboard's keys, which makes the learning curve a lot easier. Thanks to my engineering teacher, I actually learned the basics of isometric blueprint sketching and possible ways to build things. First, this entire project need to be based off of a plan and a structure. Find the goals and then develop on them first like a thesis in an essay. This plan of action is what I say that sounds extremely easy but in reality is going to be more difficult than it seems. The keyboard needs to start with a circuit board that is able to read the signals inputted by the user which then requires a chip of some sort to make sense of these via code. The coding should not be that hard. I intentionally wanted this project to be a keyboard since my knowledge of coding is very rudimentary. But just linking inputs with outputs should be simple enough. If not done by myself, I can always call upon my friends for help. Next would be the developing the natural grip part. I have planned to use modeling clay to create the basic shape of human grip. The prototype will be my hand shape. I plan to round the sharp corners that are created by the hand grip and then measuring all the nooks and crannies with an accurate device, or a scanned that can input it into the 3D modeling program. Again, I purposely chose this project since its small enough to fit in a 3D printer which so happens to be at our school. Utilizing the tools at hand and the materials that I can draw upon, this project doesn't seem to much out of reach after all. Printing this prototype in one piece can be done, however that isn't my goal; my goal is to design a keyboard and a keyboard that is flexible with grip. So I plan to print the contact plates in individual pieces so that it may come together like a puzzle. After this, the coding activates and a wireless remote output-er is installed to make the remote free and accessible. Hence the NGR: Natural Grip Remote.
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AuthorSamuel Liu, Archives
December 2019
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