Blossom Package

This python package includes all the basics necessary to run your Blossom robot to make it perform various gestures and sequences.

About Blossom

Blossom is an open-hardware, open-source tensile robot that you can handcraft and accessorize to your liking. You can read more about the project in Evan Ackerman's IEEE Spectrum article.

You can visit the Blossom github repository at: https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public/

Here are two examples of Blossom robots:

Setup Software Dependencies

Make sure you're using [Python 3] To check, run python -V or python3 -V in the terminal to check the version. As of now, this codebase was tested and works on Python 3.5.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 and Mac. The following steps will assume python -V reports with version >3.x.x. If it reports 2.x.x then replace python in the following steps with python3

Also ensure that pip3 is installed. To install:
Ubuntu: sudo apt install python3-pip
Mac: curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py, then python3 get-pip.py

Virtual environments (venv) should be installed, but if not:
Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python3-venv
Mac: brew install python3-venv

Make a venv (virtual environment) in the top blossom directory and activate it:

python -m venv blossom_venv
source blossom_venv/bin/activate

General Setup

Ubuntu: You may need to run:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev libasound2-dev python3-pyqt5

and

pip install wheel

To install dependencies, run in the main blossom directory:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Mac OSX: You may need to append --user to the pip command to circumvent installation issues:

pip install -r requirements.txt --user

If this still doesn't work, you may have to append sudo before pip:

sudo pip install -r requirements.txt --user

This may require you to run in sudo for subsequent steps.

It may take a while to install the dependencies; you may want to run pip verbose to make sure that it's still downloading: pip install -rv requirements.txt

If you run into an error opening a port, try changing Blossom's permissions: sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyACM0. Alternatively, rerun everything with admin privileges.

If you're using OSX and getting strange errors, try:

sudo chown -R $USER /Library/Python/3.5

Installation will take longer on a Raspberry Pi, and you may need additional dependencies:

sudo apt-get install xvfb

Running Blossom

CLI

To start the CLI, plug Blossom in and run

python start.py

_Error: could not open port. You may need to run sudo chmod 777 <the name of the port>. Ex: sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyACM0

Additional flags:

-b do not start up Web UI
-p denote the port
-i specify an IP address (won't work with localhost)

Linux may default to a loopback IP (127.0.1.1); in this case you must specify the IP address using -i.

For example, to make Blossom nod with the yes sequence, type:

s -> Enter -> yes

Available commands:

• l: list available sequences
• s: perform a sequence, followed by the Enter key and the sequence name
• To perform an idler (looped gesture), enter two sequence names separated by =, e.g. s -> Enter -> yes=no (play yes then loop no indefinitely until another sequence is played).
• q: quit

Running Breathing gestures

This Blossom package specifically implements breathing exercises that can be used in socially assistive human robot interaction in a variety of applications.

To run the breathing demo with only audial instructions, plug Blossom in and run:

python breathingdemo.py

To run the video led breathing demo, plug Blossom in and run:

python breathingdemoVIDEO.py

To run the specific breathing controls, plug Blossom in and run:

python breathingexercise.py