S.N.A.K.E.: A Dynamically Reconfigurable Artificial Sensate Skin ...

Figure 2-1: Created by MIT Media Lab’s Responsive Environments group, Tribble is a
Distributed Sensor Network that works like an Artificial Sensate Skin
presented a plausible processing and communications method for programming an other-
wise seemingly chaotic computing platform, and therefore enabled much of the future work
that would be developed by other groups at the lab.
Tribble: Based on Butera’s work, and perhaps the most relevant to the work described here
was developed at the Responsive Environments Group by Lifton[41] with the name Tribble
or Tactile Reactive Interface Built By Linked Elements. Tribble is a dense, multi-modal and
peer-to-peer Sensor Network assembled as a plastic sphere that is made up of tiles or Skin
Patches resembling a soccer ball. Tribble is shown on Figure 2-1. This was
Each of its nodes is capable of routing data to its neighbors, and it was created as a
completely decentralized Sensor Network. Moreover, each one of the nodes is capable of
processing its own generated data without the need of a centralized processing unit. It
has however, several design characteristics that make it somewhat inflexible and difficult to
adapt. First of all, its shape is fixed to that of a sphere-shell-like object, which obviously
prevents its from being used to wrap arbitrarily shaped objects.
The second design problem is that even its smaller node is somewhat large, which means
that it is difficult to achieve high sensing density. It is also power hungry, heavy and stiff;
yet Tribble not only set the standard by which this project is measured, but it was also a
25