Wendy Ju is an associate professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the information science field at Cornell University. She is also on the faculty at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Ju comes to Cornell Tech from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University, where she was Executive Director of Interaction Design Research, and from the California College of the Arts, where she was an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the Design MFA program. Her work in the areas of human-robot interaction and automated vehicle interfaces highlights the ways that interactive devices can communicate and engage people without interrupting or intruding. Dr. Ju has innovated numerous methods for early-stage prototyping of automated systems to understand how people will respond to systems before the systems are built. She has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a Master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Her monograph on “The Design of Implicit Interactions” was published in 2015.
Building Actuated Interactive DevicesCornell Course
Course Overview
In this course you will go beyond output devices that simply display information to output devices that involve physical movement. Actuators are the components of interactive devices that act on the world. You will learn about servo motors and other actuators that can be incorporated into your interactive devices.
Some actuators, such as motors, can draw heavy currents at times. In order to use these actuators you will need to work out the power requirements for your device. In this course you will learn some of the basics of battery selection and power management.
There are a number of practical activities involving the Arduino and various external components, and during these practical sessions you will deepen your prototyping and debugging skills. These activities lead up to the final project, in which you will design and build a physical interactive device of your own choosing.
Due to the applied nature of this program, you will be sent a kit of electrical components and microcontrollers before the start of your course.
You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Designing a Simple Interactive System
- Expanding Interactive Systems With Devices and Libraries
- Designing Complex Sensing and Functions in Interactive Systems
Key Course Takeaways
- Use a servo motor to perform tasks in the physical world
- Design and integrate the interactive, electronic, and mechanical aspects of a system to unify device function
- Determine power requirements and choose batteries to match an application
- Build, prototype, and test a system design for deployment in the real world
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
Course Author
Who Should Enroll
- Engineers
- Research and design professionals
- Product designers and developers
- Software engineers
- Electronics hobbyists
- Designers/artists with the appropriate background
- Entrepreneurs
- Career starters
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