Recent content on Anirudh Sharma
The morning of AI Kiran, Lesley Ray was still fixing her BrainHome prototype. Cables, sensor arrays, a laptop that wouldn’t talk to the controller board. I watched her troubleshoot with the same calm panic I recognized from my own past. In 2013, I was an INK Fellow in Kochi. The night before I was supposed to present on the main stage, I was in my hotel room (jetlagged after a flight from…
Started as someone doing ActionScript in Macromedia Flash I got into Human-Computer-Interaction after watching Jeff’s Hann’s multi-touch work. That’s the power of a really cool demo that inspired the birth of NUIGroup community which spawned 1000s of makers all around the world making their own projector camera multitouch systems. All of it became mainstream once Apple released…
Ideas for better engineering. 
 I’m very passionate about applied and analytical material science with a background in leading startup initiatives. I had built a haptic wearable startup with synthesis gait analysis and haptic feedback through wearables, which exposed me to several schools of design and engineering, and on-ground impact. This had brought me to Boston at MIT to explore…
Project Amphibia. 
 Keywords : Carbon linings, electronics, deep water, cell‐laden hydrogels, directly printed wearable systems 
 Leaving a set of these images here as an inspiration, and diary entry for adaptive and embodied interfaces. Most of this research in Organic User interfaces have been around tattooing on the skin which is still in its infancy, due to physical limitations of…
Now evolution is a slow process, and as humans and smartphone users this evolution to ’not drop things’ is going to only happen in a million years. It’s easier to redesign bodies/smartphones. 
 I shattered two phones in the last two years, two screens I got replaced were expensive and quite a hit on the pocket. Humans drop things. 
 
 
 A shattered smartphone…
My house in Delhi has a guard that walks around and whistles all night to keep the thieves away. I am still amused by how the entire street comes together and contributes and hires the guard, instead of complaining and waiting for the Govt. to solve their issues, which is slow as heck. 
 Its like a citizen contributed and distributed parallel police with evolving protocol, when the systems…
It was almost the same time 3 years ago when I headed to Boston to pursue research at Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. Time flied, too fast to perceive it went by.. 
 College in the middle of nowhere 
 The life before that was that of running around, seeking each resource actively, hanging onto IRC channels, attending FOSS events, to learn and to meet people in the virtual…
pokayoke! 
 Poka-yoke (ポカヨケ?) [poka yoke] is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing”. A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka). Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.The concept was formalised, and the term…
the missing airplane shows that whatever futuristic things we might develop, its important to be in the present(+3 seconds to avoid maybe a dangerous cat to attack you). 
 we propose technologies that ‘would touch lives’ 50 years ahead, and forget to live in/for the present. either we’re too much altruistic or just too busy in the rat race of inventing a future that we…

 According to the accredited mechanical flying rules
the bumble-bee can’t fly,
because of its shape and its weight
compared with its wing surface.
But the bumble-bee doesn’t know about that
and does fly nonetheless. 
 – Rolf Schneider
Magic is inspiring. For it can light up the eyes of the sad, make the logical person believe in things he wouldn’t otherwise. Any piece of art, music, work that inspires others to me seems like magic. For its so simple yet none of us could make it, other than the creator. Like Naqvi.
That’s the version 0.1 of the ink-harvester box design. I ended up designing my own enclosure, instead of using Altoids box, though they’re the same size. 
 
 
 The suction exhaust pulls the air containing soot particles from the surroundings. 
 
 
 A syringe with 1 way valve is being used as the pump which will push the ink into the cartridge. 
 
 
…
This is not an attempt to win over the pollution. Just a minor itch that led me to build something cool from observations arising from Nostalgia of the days back in India :) 
 Nostalgia 0 - Just after you’re born. ( Suggested by Kunal) 
 If you’re born in India chances are that your grandma will take some steps to protect you from wicked spirits by smudging kajal onto your…

 ‘Our goal here is to complement rather than replace.’ 
 Recently I came across an article on augmented reality. The term these days is used like a fad. Like in 1970s cell-phone was the hot term, those what it represents today is more than just a cellular phone, its a hell lot of technology in packed in a soapbar. 
 20 years from now, there would be no difference in real…
Multiple ideas I was thinking about that could be used to improve people’s lives- make new experiences happen, and tap into the unknown 
 – Sound Glasses. 
 The user wears the glass and looks at a painting. A large painting. And the system gives audio feedback on the parts highlighted based on an audio command ‘Tell me more’. 
 Technology: Pre-calibrated system.…
I had forgotten what darkness looks like, what is it to walk under the quiet of the moon by the roar of the waterfalls. 
 Boston has been beautiful so far, so were the cities I lived in back in India. But the problem with cities is that they’re cities -loud, fast, and always well lit- even when you don’t want! I remember being a child looking at the nightsky and looking at stars…
The silence of the night and emptiness within reminds me to complete 14 to-do past blogposts that I wrote in my diary ;) 
 Looks like am gonna find some OCR goodness. 
 Soon…
Three images varying in direction and intensity of light 
 
 
 Soft natural light from one direction 
 
 
 
 
 Shifted angle, stronger directional light 
 
 
 
 
 High-intensity light creating dramatic contrast 
 
 
 Simple submission of three 
 
 
 Three exposures combined for the HDR composite 
 
 
 HDR using…
A beautiful idea! in form of an installation. Gives me goosebumps! :) 
 
 
 

 The way the mechanical parts mimic organic motion – you can’t tell where the engineering ends and nature begins. That’s the kind of work that makes me want to run back to the lab and start building something. When machines move like living things, it changes how you feel about them,…
I usually cover my long distance travels by air- for it saves time, and is less tiring (and was affordable in the past). 
 The beginning 
 Call it naivety or my callous attitude, but I completely forgot the fact that its hard to fetch a cheap ticket when your travel plans are made just a day in advance. 
 Owing to recent price inflations and my last minute plans I decided to cover my…
This is the first time I am writing a personal experience that’s not design/tech/tinker related on my blog. So bear with it :) 
 I live alone in Hyderabad now unlike Bikaner and Bangalore where I had close to 10-15 friends around, anytime! 
 I’ve recently become a social media aficionado both, on Twitter and Facebook. A behavior change that I saw happened in me when I quit my…
Latest updates on development of Le-Chal shoe can be accessed here .
Here is an auto-rickshaw repair process I regularly notice during my visit to Kanakpura, Bangalore. 
 The repair 
 An image of the interaction while the repair process is on: 
 
 
 Mechanic’s hands-on interaction during auto-rickshaw engine repair 
 
 
 An image of the parts that are laid down during assembly and disassembly. 
 
 
 Disassembled…
The bumpy ride on the Bangalore streets triggered a thought the other day, why not log the data and analyse it later(whackily purposeless initially). 
 The desire to log is esp. a fallout of my recent stint with user studies dealing with data cleaning/analysis and deriving statistical results from it: formally two-way ANOVA tests, T-tests etc. and who doesn’t love clean graphs telling a…
So the scratch bootcamp turned out to be fun during my 14 day break from regular research. We traveled 3 cities, 4 schools, and introduced Scratch Programming environment to 8-12 year old kids. Most kids were first time introduced to programming. The novel drag and drop based looping and the fact that other kids from around the world could re-mix, check out their projects, excited them into coming…
New year! 
 HTC Dev Phone1, first time Android experience! 
 The device felt loose, just like it would fall apart if I shake it. Why would I? Of-course the accelerometer exists, but then 500 $ should make it tough? 
 Although its late, in Jan 2011, I got an Android phone hands-on to try out for some prototyping. Being a iPhone user since the first gen, i found many contrasts, mostly…
I am quite interested in exploring the Multitouch scenario on Mozilla Firefox for my project under Felipe’s and Gerv’s mentorship. Working with Mozilla Team design team members ( Alexander Limi ) and mentors is turning out to be a great experience so far. I am learning a lot of new things. 
 Browsing the web is a very distributed activity with a lot of interactions possible. My aim…
Just taking a moment out to dedicate some space from one of the last few days that remain at college. The experience turned out very good, and will always remain with me. 
 Sad and happy. The nights were busy coding, the days were spent tinkering and building things with whatever we could find. Bikaner gave me everything – the jugaad, the friendships, the confidence to just try stuff.…
Looks like there’s a problem with OpenCV’s distributed parameterization of coordinates used during the camera calibration tasks. Three distinct sources of information on img distortion formulae apparently give three non-equivalent description of the parameters and equations involved: 
 (1) In their book “Learning OpenCV” write regarding lens distortion: 
…
Its week two weeks since I finally bought myself a Acer Aspire 5738 pzg multitouch (actually dual-touch) notebook. 
 The Acer Aspire 5738PZG dual-touch notebook 
 Its a welcome change, since for the past two years our multitouch experiments required a lot of background effort due to our utter dependence on our custom built MT screen. The capacitive screen is good, its responsive and…
After a lot of misery I thought no device is worth respect more than a device. Lol! not true. The reason was my bad home button. right, its the only button on the device. 
 
 I happened to take a sharp swivel knife and pop my iPhone’s case open. 
 
 
 
 iPhone opened up, showing the corroded grounding strap on the home button 
 

I am waiting to see what happens to the indigenous Notion Ink Adam and Apple iPad. Will it even turn out to be a war? Both are not released yet- but the coming summer isn’t far away too. Should i quote “breathless anticipation usually reserved by nubile nymphets for rakish rockers.” :-P 
 The Notion Ink Adam tablet with its Pixel Qi display 
 Adam beats iPad hands down in…
Around a week back while playing around with a friend, i took some photographs from my iPhone that were one of the most inseparable ones to me. Due to a stupid backup method, I happened to accidently delete and lose them in a jiffy. 
 The odds to recovering them were low, and i took some precautions like minimally using my iPhone so that disk Read+Write sessions do not overwrite the data…
Long time for this post too! eh. mugging for the exams is quite a shakle to breakaway from :-P The reason I am writing this post amid the tests is being overwhelmed by Rahul Motiyar’s new multitouch monitor mount hack. The thoughts from the B’lore trip and the above work culminated :-P 
 I happened to visit and take a look around HPL India B’lore. The way gesture keyboard…
Duh! Long overdue for this post. Almost 500 students attended the FOSS Fest during Sakshama :-) Mostly undergrad prefinal and final year engineering students. We started barely 20 days before and managed to finish everything right in time! quickfire way :-) 
 Most of us wishfully had almost none or less than 2-3 hours of sleep for the 3 days of the event, it was fun! 
 Reason: The days…
We’ve planned a FOSS event in college from 28-31st October. We’ll be talking to people about enhancing their contribution to the commnity, code, and the spirit behind. 
 Probably we’ll be having Niyam Bhushan . So we’ll be talking and doing an unconference on Human Computer Interaction, Multitouch, programming gestures, why a programmer should consider design while…
I happened to stumble across a gesture pad devised by Shekhar Borgaonkar. Needless to say, its one of the most wonderful innovations as per inputting Devnagri(Hindi) script is concerned. Due to its complexity, the Hindi based keyboards used today aren’t user friendly at all. A beginner cannot think of using the same for text entry. 
 Interfacing the same to a touchscreen/stylus-input…
Finally I got my GSoC certificate of completion. Huge thanks to my mentor Pawel Solyga(solydzajs) and Google Open Source Programs Office. 
 The Fedex shipping had twisted and crumpled and torn it a bit on the way from Googleplex to Delhi, a little trick called “lamination” helped it look as good as a new one ( atleast in the scanned image below). yay! 
 
 
 Google…
With the help of Soy Productions i could get a small demo video. Due to table configuration problems a good recording couldn’t be done for now at my end. Soon our multitouch wall will be up and running. 
 Anyway, This is how camera manipulation would look as of now. Let’s see if we come up with new ideas soon. 
 Task TBD - Make touch sensitive drawing and camera manipulation…
The “pencils down” date for GSoC is approaching fast. This is the core of the work during this time. 
 1 . Code cleaning. Decided to keep the previous ruby tuio client experiments’ work safe in the repository (pre-midterms GSoC work). It might be useful in the future development where better and refined gestures might be inculcated. 
 2 . Code commenting wherever…
Just figured out that drawing using gestures in a limited ability environment like SketchUp, is only possible in theory. Practicalizing it would be a waste of effort. 
 If i go following the advice of NUI veterans Infrared Pen/Stylus should be the best way to draw in SketchUp. Design Wise it should look like this :-) 
 The thing is – fingers are great for grabbing, rotating, zooming.…
That’s how our first gestures tests came out as using TUIO simulator. The BSR watermark is from the ahh! propietary screen recorder software. Why isn’t it Open Source! 
 The good news – basic rotate and zoom gestures are working with the TUIO simulator input. The not-so-good news – there’s noticeable lag between the gesture and SketchUp responding, the XML file…
Quite a long time since we didn’t show our work done in pre-summer-holidays time at IIT delhi’s Design lab. Here’s a sneak peek into the multitouch wall done by Sparsh team during their IIT Delhi stay. 
 Hail NUI :) The upcoming video will show some custom applications with object marking. 
 Building the wall at IIT Delhi’s design lab was proper jugaad – we…
Well here the survey results we conducted on the NUIGroup community :) 
 You will require to zoom in several times, as its a clumsy fit. 
 Multi Touch SketchUp Survey Results- Google Summer of Code 2009 
 Special thanks to Pecan, Colin and Rishi :)
My thoughts were triggered after I read the Bill Buxton argument . 
 We must focus on streamlining the interaction. by number of gestures minimum , using them only when they’re required and naturally usable -> Simpler and better SketchUp design and modeling experience. This implies that we should using Multitouch in only one thing -> Camera motions in Sketchup i.e. Zoom, PAN and Orbit.…

 make a toolbar and User Interface for the plugin 
 Figure out how the overlay circular menu will work on SketchUp-> This could pop open after someone makes a NUI swish(~) gesture. 
 
 The circular menu part is what’s keeping me up at night. On a multitouch surface you don’t have a right-click, so you need some gesture to trigger the menu – and it has to feel…
Just happened to see this video off Richard Monsol Haefel’s blog. The way this concept model has been done is awesome, atleast it shows what the future has in store for CAD modelers. 
 I’m glad to see someone in the CAD world doing something innovative. Must admit that the guys doing the modeling are creative and all set to change the scenario :-) I’ve some ideas running up…
Oh, the EventRelay was so wonderful we just knew :-) 
 On 24th and 25th July I was busy with my Google Summer of Code doing: 
 
 The Wiki Page with information about the project readily accessible 
 Some Code Cleanup 
 Adding protected bins on the the repository, so that mentors could try out each. 
 Change-log maintainance 
 
 Apart this I am working atm on how…
We’ve now been able to trick SketchUp now to pose TUIO data is SketchUp data by posting the TUIO data as a SketchUp “User” message type. It would then be in sync with SketchUp events rather than asynchronous TUIO events. 
 This way we can sub-class SketchUp (like EventRelay), pass the data off to the SketchUp’s embed Ruby as a Synchronous event. Here’s the result…
1 . Added a new blogpost (last), regarding my gesture implementation thought. 
 2 . The repo had gone erroneous due to cleanup and I faced some issues while using the Merge command. Things are fine now – fixed by Pawel. 
 The indented commit message was: “Remove non-required components that came while freezing required filesets. Code commenting and cleaning updations. Adding a…