A swarm of bees and a swatter.

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peter.kuh..

A swarm of bees and a swatter.

in General Discussion • Other • 2 years ago

Hello,

I'm studying interaction design at Kolding School of Design and currently taking a course where we are programming in processing, so i'm fairly new to programming in processing, but i have experience in other programming languages.

I have a idea but neat some help where i should start, i'v found some examples but nothing thats exactly what i'm looking for.

My idea i's that but disturbing a beehive you will activate/provoke a angry swarm of bee's that you then would have to fight away with a swatter - the bee's a shown on the wall using a projector and the user is holding a swatter - tracked by an IR?

My problem is how do I create the angry swarm of bee's, and then the destruction of them with the swatter. I have been looking into using flocking, but can't seem to find any thing about using some type of onclick event to kill the bees.

This problem is my main concern, because i don't have a project with out a solution.

I hope any can help me

Peter

Replies(2)

milespeyt..

Re: A swarm of bees and a swatter.

2 years ago

I've made something similar for an app I'm making, maybe I can help you out. For the general behavior of the bees, look towards the flocking algorithm, that should provide most of the simulation. If you can get the x, y position of the swatter, (I'm not really sure what libraries you would use for that, opencv maybe) then you can check collisions with every bee and the swatter in a loop. If the bee is within the radius of the swatter, then you can have it ease (find deltaX, and deltaY, and multiply that by an easing value) to a point a certain distance away from the swatter. Make sure that the repelling behavior overrides the flocking behavior, and you're good. This is a bit of a hack, but it worked for me.

I hope that helps

peter.kuh..

Re: A swarm of bees and a swatter.

2 years ago

Thanks

Now i know i was one the right track, unfortunately i "have" to have some type of working prototype to show tomorrow, so i had to cut some corners, so know flocking, but so far i have a lot of balls = bees and a target that react to some simple motion tracking - the idea is to have a webcam with a IR pass filter and a IR diode on the swatter.

In my sketch i have a ellipse that tracks motion and acts as a curser and then when you press the mouse the balls should disappear and they do - the only things is that the balls disappearing is controlled by "mouseX" and "mouseY" and not with "avgX" and "avgY" witch is the motion tracking values.

So my quest is to input the value of "avgX" and "avgY" into the class Ball instead of "mouseX" and "mouseY".

here is my sketch:

Bees

import processing.video.*;
float avgX, avgY;
// Variable for capture device
Capture video;
// Previous Frame
PImage prevFrame;
// How different must a pixel be to be a "motion" pixel
float threshold = 200;
//Create balls-array
Ball[] balls = new Ball[150];
void setup(){
size(800,600);
// Using the default capture device
video = new Capture(this, width, height, 15);
// Create an empty image the same size as the video
prevFrame = createImage(video.width,video.height,RGB);
//Give each ball a name/number
for (int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
balls[i] = new Ball();
}
smooth();
}
void draw(){
// You don't need to display it to analyze it!
// image(video,0,0);
// Capture video
if (video.available()) {
// Save previous frame for motion detection!!
prevFrame.copy(video,0,0,video.width,video.height,0,0,video.width,video.height);
prevFrame.updatePixels();
video.read();
}
loadPixels();
video.loadPixels();
prevFrame.loadPixels();
// These are the variables we'll need to find the average X and Y
float sumX = 0;
float sumY = 0;
int motionCount = 0;
// Begin loop to walk through every pixel
for (int x = 0; x < video.width; x++ ) {
for (int y = 0; y < video.height; y++ ) {
// What is the current color
color current = video.pixels[x+y*video.width];
// What is the previous color
color previous = prevFrame.pixels[x+y*video.width];
// Step 4, compare colors (previous vs. current)
float r1 = red(current);
float g1 = green(current);
float b1 = blue(current);
float r2 = red(previous);
float g2 = green(previous);
float b2 = blue(previous);
// Motion for an individual pixel is the difference between the previous color and current color.
float diff = dist(r1,g1,b1,r2,g2,b2);
// If it's a motion pixel add up the x's and the y's
if (diff > threshold) {
sumX += x;
sumY += y;
motionCount++;
}
}
}
// average location is total location divided by the number of motion pixels.
float avgX = sumX / motionCount;
float avgY = sumY / motionCount;
strokeWeight(20);
stroke(200, 200, 240, 150);
fill(220, 220, 240, 100);
ellipse(avgX, avgY, 80, 80);
//Update backgound
noStroke();
fill(255, 255, 255, 100);
rect(0, 0, width, height);
//Call the different functions
for(int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
balls[i].display();
balls[i].animate();
balls[i].bouncing();
balls[i].react();
}
}

and the Ball class

class Ball{
float radius = 10;
float positionX, positionY;
float velocityX, velocityY;
color fillColor = color(255, 204, 0, 255);
Ball(){
positionX = random(width);
positionY = random(height);
velocityX = random(-3, 3);
velocityY = random(-3, 3);
}
void animate(){
positionX += velocityX;
positionY += velocityY;
}
void display(){
noStroke();
fill(fillColor);
ellipse(positionX, positionY, radius * 2, radius * 2);
}
void bouncing(){
if(positionX-radius < 0 || positionX+radius > width){
velocityX *= -1;
fillColor = color(255, 204, 0, 255);
}
if(positionY-radius < 0 || positionY+radius > height){
velocityY *= -1;
fillColor = color(255, 204, 0, 255);
}
}
void react(){
float mouseDistance = dist(positionX, positionY, mouseX, mouseY);
if(mouseDistance < radius*2 && mousePressed == true){
fillColor = color(255,255,255,0);
}
}
}

Thanks

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