Oksana ordered the robots today. They should arrive tomorrow. I love how ridiculously easy it is to find things like this on the Internet. Balloons, helium, robot paratroopers… Each one found on the first google search page looking for it.
Oksana’s friend Alicia raised concerns about the potential ecological impact of bursting 140 balloons in the sky and then raining down plastic robots with plastic parachutes. She also found out that it’s illegal to launch more than 10 balloons at a time from a Toronto park within 24 hours. This put a damper on our plans, especially with the 140 robots currently being packaged for next day delivery.
We have a couple of options though. I could not find any rules against launching a lot of balloons OUTSIDE of Toronto, or sequentially launching 10 balloons each for a number of days. There’s also the option of doing an air/helium split so that the balloons just slowly drift fall to the ground if launched from, say, Emily’s ridiculously high apartment. Also, latex balloon balloons are biodegradable and will decompose at the same rate as an oak leaf. So the only really danger to the environment would be if the no one found robots themselves, as they are just plain old plastic
Also this evening, Oksana and I went to a Kinect Hacking lecture which taught us the background and technology used to connect the Kinect to your computer and use it’s computer vision technology to do astounding things. I think the Kinect will make for a great winter project, especially since we won’t have to wait for nice weather like with the balloons. I think the first thing I’d like to work on is augmented sound. So you could have a room with ambient music that would change depending on were you were standing, or even what you were touching! It would make for a great art installation, and would be WICKED at parties.