Leah Buechley: How to "sketch" with electronics

51,706 views ・ 2012-11-15

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Thu-Huong Ha
0
0
7000
00:16
Today, I'm going to talk to you about sketching electronics.
1
16037
4416
00:20
I'm, among several other things, an electrical engineer,
2
20453
5368
00:25
and that means that I spend a good amount of time
3
25821
3697
00:29
designing and building new pieces of technology,
4
29518
4374
00:33
and more specifically designing and building electronics.
5
33892
4540
00:38
And what I've found is that the process of designing
6
38432
4358
00:42
and building electronics is problematic in all sorts of ways.
7
42790
5594
00:48
So it's a really slow process, it's really expensive,
8
48384
4841
00:53
and the outcome of that process,
9
53225
2440
00:55
namely electronic circuit boards,
10
55665
2416
00:58
are limited in all sorts of kind of interesting ways.
11
58081
3029
01:01
So they're really small, generally, they're square
12
61110
3640
01:04
and flat and hard, and frankly, most of them
13
64750
4365
01:09
just aren't very attractive, and so my team and I
14
69115
4313
01:13
have been thinking of ways to really change and mix up
15
73428
3988
01:17
the process and the outcome of designing electronics.
16
77416
4661
01:22
And so what if you could design and build electronics
17
82077
4088
01:26
like this? So what if you could do it extremely quickly,
18
86165
4040
01:30
extremely inexpensively, and maybe more interestingly,
19
90205
5665
01:35
really fluidly and expressively and even improvisationally?
20
95870
5264
01:41
Wouldn't that be so cool, and that wouldn't that open up
21
101134
3322
01:44
all sorts of new possibilities?
22
104456
2448
01:46
I'm going to share with you two projects that are
23
106904
3384
01:50
investigations along these lines, and we'll start with this one.
24
110288
4709
01:54
(Video) Magnetic electronic pieces and ferrous paper.
25
114997
5737
02:00
A conductive pen from the Lewis lab at UIUC.
26
120734
3832
02:04
Sticker templates.
27
124566
2874
02:07
Speed x 4.
28
127440
2560
02:25
Making a switch.
29
145519
4149
02:37
Music: DJ Shadow.
30
157469
2687
02:55
Adding some intelligence with a microcontroller.
31
175435
3317
03:11
Sketching an interface.
32
191995
3499
03:19
(Music)
33
199528
7799
03:28
(Laughter)
34
208895
4170
03:33
(Applause)
35
213065
5706
03:38
Pretty cool, huh? We think so.
36
218771
2997
03:41
So now that we developed these tools
37
221768
3784
03:45
and found these materials that let us do these things,
38
225552
3738
03:49
we started to realize that, essentially, anything
39
229290
4168
03:53
that we can do with paper, anything that we can do
40
233458
2384
03:55
with a piece of paper and a pen
41
235842
2415
03:58
we can now do with electronics.
42
238257
2417
04:00
So the next project that I want to show you is kind of a
43
240674
2368
04:03
deeper exploration of that possibility.
44
243042
3560
04:06
And I'll kind of let it speak for itself.
45
246602
3864
04:10
(Music)
46
250466
90446
05:40
(Applause)
47
340912
5368
05:46
So the next step for us in this process
48
346280
4800
05:51
is now to find a way to let all of you
49
351080
3728
05:54
build things like this,
50
354808
2896
05:57
and so the way that we're approaching that is by
51
357704
3080
06:00
teaching workshops to people where we explain
52
360784
2607
06:03
how they can use these kinds of tools, and then also
53
363391
3113
06:06
working to get the tools and the materials and techniques
54
366504
3742
06:10
out into the real world in a variety of ways.
55
370246
3750
06:13
And so sometime soon, you'll be able to play and build
56
373996
3584
06:17
and sketch with electronics in this fundamentally new way.
57
377580
3794
06:21
So thank you very much. (Applause)
58
381374
4000
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7