Robotic Gadgets January 26, 2007
Posted by reto wettach in gadgets, innovative interfaces, mobile.7 comments
Finally a research at the Soon Chung Yang University (Korea) finally implemented a long dream of us, the merger of a mobile phone with a robot. The robot finds its powerstation by itself and automatically drives to the call receiver. It also can indicate whether a nice or a mean person is calling – through “pleasant and unpleasant motion patterns”. (Video here, Thanks Andre)
There are lots of earlier studies about bringing robots and gadgets together. Here two my favorites:
CLOCKY (earlier report) by Gauri Nanda from the MIT is an alarm clock “for people who have trouble getting out of bed”, which runs away, when it starts ringing.
The concept phone Nokia 888 is a shape-changing phone: it can communicate its status by changing shapes, but also two owners of the 888 can send shapes to each other, as e.g. heart shapes.
Challenging Interfaces July 5, 2006
Posted by reto wettach in biofeedback, innovative interfaces, physical interaction design.1 comment so far
During the two teaching projects on alarm clocks, which I taught in Ivrea and Potsdam, we came across various “challenging interfaces”, which would force the user into a state of higher concentration/attention.
Well known is CLOCKY, a robotic alarm clock, which runs away and hides, so that the user is forced out of bed.
During the classes I was teaching, my students also came up with some interesting “challenging interfaces”:
Hayat Benchenaa developed SEFRA, an alarm clock hanging from the ceiling, which is switched off by hitting is. Each time one hits the clock during the snooze function, it would rise toward the ceiling and therefore force you out of the bed.
Blanc-o-matic by Eva Burneleit and Katrin Lütkemöller is a blanket, which would after each time switching off the snooze-function be torn down in the direction of your feets by 20 cm. Works only in winter.
Another commercial product for a “challenging interface” is the “Pattern Clock“, which forces the user to play a round of Simon-Says.
Similar to the samples above is the Dead Man’s Switch, which is used in trains and should guarantee the the operator is not incapacitated (or asleep). There are different levels of complexity for this function, as reacting to beep.
Another kind of a “challenging interface” is the part in onlineregistration processes, where you need to prove that you are human through recognizing some strange words (images taken from the yahoo mail registration).
Are there more challenging interfaces? And what can we learn from them? And why are we not using physilogical sensors for this task?
To be continued…
