That's Alcohol

Brief / Concept

The project consists in a physical computing installation that shows through some colorful puppets the alcohol level in the visitors’ breathe.
From a technical standpoint, this system is built on a high-performance servo-motor that drives the springs embedded into the puppets through several pistons. The servo-motor position is determined by the values measured each time by the alcohol-sensor. The relation between alcohol level and puppets position is proportionally represented: the more a person drank - the more the puppets will be laying down.

Design Process

The project was selected for the international exhibition “That’s Design” (2007 Milan Design Week) that presents each year a selection of the students’ projects of several European schools of design. That’s Alcohol was developed during an intensive two-weeks session - from the concept generation phase to the final prototype construction, physical computing and code programming.
The physical computing part of the installation was based on an Arduino microcontroller board that was programmed to constantly read the values collected from the alcohol sensor and to determine accordingly the servo-motor torque angle. The torsion, on the othe hand, determined the pressure on the spring puppets and, consequentially, their bending position. The Arduino board was also communicating through the serial port with a tablet PC displaying a Flash movie at the end of each interaction containing some ironical comments on the drunkenness result achieved.

Experience video