How to make a remote-control sentient web-puppet by hacking Twitter, Google, Skype, Arduino and Processing!

Step 8: Possible ways to build on the concepts that Twitr_janus demonstrates

Mashed up data-driven objects

The central objective in building Twitr_janus was to demonstrate a working example of a physical object that could be controlled using web applications and their data feeds and communicate in both directions.

This aim was achieved. Twitr_janus could sense its surroundings with video and audio and could respond to remote interactions by sending web data and using that data to manipulate its postion and make it talk.

In simple terms, it is a data-driven object.

Although it's a puppet, it could have been almost anything. It could also have had different sensors, such as PIR (Infra red) sensors for detecting motion, or smoke detector technology for chemicals or thermostats for heat.

Similarly, although the sensory data here was monitored manually by a puppeteer, an object could just as easily be built to react to stimuli automatically.

Fabrication of bespoke objects using 3D printing

Although not really to do with the data principles, there are also possibilities to produce rapid prototypes of such objects with 3d printing.

In this prototype, the head here was created manually by modelling in clay. It could as easily have been built from 3-d scanning of objects. For example a scan of a real person's face could make the puppet look like that person. The head could be constructed by scanning the various components (such as the face of a person, the lip of the deodorant bottles that form the eye sockets, the shape of the skull, etc.) and combining meshes to print a single monocoque shell...

A (crude) 3d mesh of the original physical face mask is  available on Autodesk's 123D community here:
www.123dapp.com/obj-Catch/Twitr-Janus-Mask/842675

A 3d rendering of Twitr_janus showing the physical form is available here:
http://www.123dapp.com/AssetManager/Index.cfm?stgaction=getProduct&subaction=preview&step=1&inttype=4&intproductid=1151611