- Project
- Bachelor project at ECAL
- Year
- 2016
- Role
- Product Thinking, UX/UI & Development
- Discipline
- Product Design, IOT Prototyping, Interaction Design, Physical Computing
Overview
Deltu is a delta robot with a strong personality that interacts with humans through two iPads. Depending on his mood, it plays with you — but if you make too many mistakes, Deltu might just get upset and decide to ignore you. Frustrated, Deltu will leave the game and take some selfies to post on Instagram.
Built with
- Arduino
- Unity
- Xcode
- C++
- C#
The concept
Rather than designing another efficient machine, the brief was inverted: what if a robot had moods, and the quality of your play decided how it treated you?
Deltu plays memory and matching games against a human across two iPads. Its patience is finite. Perform well and it keeps playing; fail repeatedly and it disengages entirely — abandoning the game to take selfies and post them to Instagram.
Design & build
The delta mechanism was designed as a clean, exposed structure in copper and wood, making its movement part of the experience.
The delta mechanism was built in copper and wood, with the motion logic driven by Arduino and C++. The iPad application was developed in Unity using C#, communicating with the Arduino in real time to drive gameplay and Deltu's adaptive mood system.
Reception
Deltu was picked up widely by the international design and technology press, and appeared on the Spanish television show El Hormiguero 3.0 alongside Norah Jones in October 2016.
Press
© 2016 Alexia Lechot / ECAL — Image by Younès Klouche
Next project
Ramayana
An AR application for museum
