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What I discovered
It’s difficult to think like a
parrot, even with practice. Sometime you have to guess
and sometime you guess wrong.
But on many things I guessed right,
and the parrot is using the keyboard
and increasing the number of keys pressed and the
number of different keys pressed. I am also observing
increased vocalizations of the sounds presented as
a part of the program material.
Building prototypes is extraordinarily
valuable. You do not know what you’re going
to learn until you actually do it.
Building hardware is harder than building
software.
And, most importantly—
Clamp metal to the drill press before
drilling!
What I want to do next
- I want to develop additional modes of operation
that will continue to interest the birds.
- I want to build a second keyboard for out other
parrot.
- I want to develop a mechanism that will find
images on the web and load them for use. The least
frequently selected images could be replaced with
a new image and sound and a regular (or random)
basis.
- I want to play video based on a key press.
- I want to find a way to get the humans who visit
my house to quit playing with the bird’s
keyboard.
- I want to test and report on several factors
that may be affecting the use of the keyboard:
color of the keys, size (diameter) of the keys,
the position of the keys relative to the perch,
and many others.
In addition to my Capstone advisor,
Rosalie Bujarski, I would like to express my appreciation
to Ron Hartung and Marianne Vakalis who have acted
as my advisors and coaches and friends through my
graduate school experience, and also to the owners
of the images who have given me permission to use
their images on this web siter.
I would also like to thank my family
for their support and love.
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