Hello! My name is Katie Miner, and this is Neil Li, and we’re from the Driverless Cities studio. Neil and I both have a fascination of science fiction as a genre, so we decided to make our own spin on it with Alien Portal.

Our main inspiration is sci fi television shows like Stargate.

For decades, people have been wondering what it was like if an alien popped up in their living room. Now, there is an animation about that specific thing happening! This story highlights the differences in how we expect aliens to behave and how they actually do. We expect them to automatically know how to communicate with humans as soon as they arrive, but they don’t. In this story, the alien needs the human to help save the world, and a hilarious comedy of miscommunication ensues.

The animation was storyboarded with pencil and paper, and then revised visually as we went on.

As you can see, the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. Here we have a mockup poster with our two main characters. The Human here, is the hero, the main character, and the protagonist. The Alien here, is the one who brings the conflict to the Human in more ways than one.

Here we have an actual scene in the show which illustrates the difficulty the two characters have, because neither of them speak the same language. 

And last but not least, the world on the other side of the portal. It is a desolate wasteland where destructive nature has finally taken over. This apocalypse is what the hero is trying to prevent.

All of this may make sense when you watch the animation. We are proud of every handdrawn frame and every handpicked soundeffect, and we hope you enjoy the show!

The AR Block is a complex and innovative cube that is designed to teach young children cognitive recognition of shapes and colors.

The main idea for this AR Block came about in the midst of a lecture from a representative from United Way. The representative explained that one of the key aspects of learning that children need to know before entering elementary schools is the recognition and recreation of basic shapes. We decided to create something to do just that. Our first idea was to create an interactive environment in which children could experience and experiment with shapes and colors. This idea would take a VR (Virtual Reality) headset and a VR coding engine, both of which are expensive and impractical. Continuing off of the idea of a simulation, we decided to enter the realm of AR, or Augmented Reality.

In this simulation, children would use an App on an Android Phone to view the real world around them. Following this concept, we decided to create a cube that the child can hold and play with in their hands. This cube has a unique laser-
etched and hand-painted design on each face that the Android app can recognize and interpret. When the app sees one of these designs, it displays an object in 3D.

This collar guides dogs directly to a certain location via a laser pointer attached to system of programmed servos. It was designed in partnership with Harmony Village, an innovative new development that has been working with our studio. One of their big focuses is promoting harmonious living between pets and humans — as a result, our studio prompt was centered around human-pet interaction.

This project went through several iterations before arriving at our final prototype. Initially, our project idea involved passive chips in the dog collar, and geolocation devices placed in the street lamps in the development. This was too extraneous to implement, so we evolved to a Laser-Led Dog Collar. The collar is designed to help balance freedom and safety in the pet owner’s mind; it allows the owner to lead the dog places remotely as well as safely. Our project uses an Arduino which interfaces with a SIM card via an Adafruit FONA 808 board, giving the collar access to the Internet and GPS satellites. The software interfaces with Google Maps, parsing the walking directions for people into a series of steps for the dog. This has the dual advantages of making the software more power — by leveraging Google Map’s routing algorithms — and safer, by keeping the dogs on the sidewalk like any pedestrian. 

This collar guides dogs directly to a certain location via a laser pointer attached to system of programmed servos. It was designed in partnership with Harmony Village, an innovative new development that has been working with our studio. One of their big focuses is promoting harmonious living between pets and humans — as a result, our studio prompt was centered around human-pet interaction.

This project went through several iterations before arriving at our final prototype. Initially, our project idea involved passive chips in the dog collar, and geolocation devices placed in the street lamps in the development. This was too extraneous to implement, so we evolved to a Laser-Led Dog Collar. The collar is designed to help balance freedom and safety in the pet owner’s mind; it allows the owner to lead the dog places remotely as well as safely. Our project uses an Arduino which interfaces with a SIM card via an Adafruit FONA 808 board, giving the collar access to the Internet and GPS satellites. The software interfaces with Google Maps, parsing the walking directions for people into a series of steps for the dog. This has the dual advantages of making the software more power — by leveraging Google Map’s routing algorithms — and safer, by keeping the dogs on the sidewalk like any pedestrian. 

This collar guides dogs directly to a certain location via a laser pointer attached to system of programmed servos. It was designed in partnership with Harmony Village, an innovative new development that has been working with our studio. One of their big focuses is promoting harmonious living between pets and humans — as a result, our studio prompt was centered around human-pet interaction.

This project went through several iterations before arriving at our final prototype. Initially, our project idea involved passive chips in the dog collar, and geolocation devices placed in the street lamps in the development. This was too extraneous to implement, so we evolved to a Laser-Led Dog Collar. The collar is designed to help balance freedom and safety in the pet owner’s mind; it allows the owner to lead the dog places remotely as well as safely. Our project uses an Arduino which interfaces with a SIM card via an Adafruit FONA 808 board, giving the collar access to the Internet and GPS satellites. The software interfaces with Google Maps, parsing the walking directions for people into a series of steps for the dog. This has the dual advantages of making the software more power — by leveraging Google Map’s routing algorithms — and safer, by keeping the dogs on the sidewalk like any pedestrian.