Our first ideas for UX designs are in the back of the napkin (or, scrap cardboard) stage.
We're thinking about the cutting-edge new field of human-apple interaction. The
simplest case of how to lathe an apple is to square it into a known shape, and define a curve, and
cut it to have that curve the whole way around. It would be slightly more difficult to scan the apple,
then decal it. Harder still would be to allow the user to scan the apple, then take the mesh and
push points on it, and then carve that 3D geometry into it.
Eyal prototyped a version of a UI which would give us basic lathe functionality.
The sliders on the right side of the screen can be used to change the
desired shape of the apple.
Joao also mocked up several possibilities for our eventual interface, depending
on the actual abilities of our made-in-six-days-apple-lathe.
The simplest possibility would be to define a curve, then revolve that curve, and then
carve that using the lathe as a traditional lathe.
A slightly more difficult idea, but one which would be really cool, and take advantage
of the fact that Squidworks is responsive and never compiles out to gcode, would be to
create a live lathe. This would involve an interface largely based on
this tool,
but which would actually control a lathe. This version will only be possible if we get the
lathe up and running with reasonable latency.
It would be slightly harder, but very cool, to be able to carve decals into the apple.
This would require having our z-axis in sync with our x and y. That's
hard because we're re-writing a lot of the Ponyo code to make it possible to
rotate the z axis continuously.
Our final, absolute reach goal, would be to be able to import a 3D model, and then
carve that model out of the apple.
By Sunday night, Eyal's prototype could talk to our motors via Squidworks.
