Frictional Intelligence
Physical embodiment and tangible human interface for LLMs
Visit the to learn about the ideas and outcome of this project. This page focuses on process documentation.
BLDC and Gesture/Touch Sensing PCB
This PCB integrates a BLDC driver, a hardware-based FOC motion controller, and three ToF sensors along with touch sensing and USB-C Power Delivery capabilities of STM32 microcontrollers. It is used across several different components of the Frictional Intelligence machine.
Proof of Concept Prototypes
What ended up being the AI machine was originally imagined as a control box. This is one of the crude early models I made to try to communicate how the intefaces would work and test the concepts.
A more detailed model was then developed with off-the-shelf parts to further test the interactions.
Moving on to the final design, since this project is about manifesting the internal mechanics of LLMs, I decided to utilize the aesthetics of industrial machineries to make evident that AI should be controlled and examined by human operators.
The physical scale of the machine is also intentionally large so that the individual interfaces don't just become recognizable daily objects.
Multi-Axis Embedding Console
This is an early exploration for different type of tangible interfaces.
To know more
This is my thesis project for Master of Industrial Design degree from Rhode Island School of Design.