Gotthard: Intelligent Furniture


[Gloria] sent in Gottard. (English translation). This little box is designed to act as a stool – that happens to follow people around, record their conversations and play them back to other visitors as a form of interaction. A set of rotating casters provide seating support, while a pair of gutted cordless drills move things around. An Aurdino handles the robotic functions., and an iBook handles recording and playback. Ultrasonic sensors guide the movement, and a set of LEDs roughly show how full the recording drive is.

8 thoughts on “Gotthard: Intelligent Furniture

  1. yeah, the recording thing is creepy (and I have better uses for hardware as costly as an ibook…) but the driving rocks.
    look at the “Gotthard fährt (drives)”-video, it seems that if you come near it from one side, it will drive away, from the other side it will drive to you (knocks knees away to force seating :) and coming from the other sides it drives in a curve…
    and the way in which the wheels sink into the box when a person seats itself on the stool is also nice.

  2. lol, this reminds me of a story i’ve heard about a senior design project at my school. some students built something just like this for their professor to follow him and help carry books, but the professor kept on giving them a hard time with the project. so, they programmed into the code to reduce the following distance by a little each time the device was turned on. eventually, it kept on hitting the back of the professor’s legs, but by then the students already graduated :P

  3. Got ‘Tard?
    I imagine walking into a house and having this thing approach me and playing a recording that says, “Oh jeez, will this thing stop following me with that damn tape recorder already?!”

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