DiseaseBot.io

This project had the primary goal of using swarm bots as a way to visually represent map-reliant information that would benefit from having an automated and tangible interface. Swarm bots fulfill this goal nicely as we can control many of them to move to different parts of our map and do different things. These bots can both move in groups to represent quantity and level of detail of a given map region or independently to represent paths of movement and changes in information across time. For the goals of this particular project we decided to represent Covid-19 infection data across the United States in the time period from early 2019 to late 2022. TOIO swarm robots were used with generative heatmaps made with Processing to display various COVID metrics over time. Four of the bots were used to display information rankings and the other two were used as controllers to change the information being displayed. The heatmaps were projected onto a toio sheet and depending on how we moved the two controller bots, we could show the top 4 US states during any month in the 2019-2022 period had the most Covid-19 related infections, hospitalizations, or deaths. We 3D-printed different heads for the controller bots for both displaying and modulating the map information. When the top left bot had the purple head on (made to look like virus cell), it would represent infection data on the map. The white head (made to look like medic symbol) would show hospitalizations, and a black head (made to look like a tombstone) would represent deaths. Another camera would classify the head of this bot and update the map data accordingly. The bot on the right-hand side with a gray arrow slider head was used to scrub through different months. The ranking bots showed which state they were on’s rank in terms of highest infections, hospitalizations, or deaths. (Highest - red, 2nd highest - orange, 3rd highest - yellow, and 4th highest - green)