Gotthard: intelligent furniture

posted Aug 10th 2007 4:58pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: robots hacks

[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.

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Comments [8]

tagged: overlords, recording, robots, take over the world, TakeOverTheWorld

8 Responses to Gotthard: intelligent furniture

Andrew Pollack says:

August 10, 2007 at 5:49 pm

I’m not sure I want my stool following me around and recording conversations.

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Shadyman says:

August 10, 2007 at 6:18 pm

… Or playing them back to other visitors.

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pascal says:

August 10, 2007 at 8:19 pm

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 fÃ¤hrt (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.

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jim says:

August 10, 2007 at 9:47 pm

“…follow people around, record their conversations and play them back to other visitors…”

Gottard: “You’ll never guess what tracy said about our Sharron!”

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Eric says:

August 10, 2007 at 10:50 pm

those things connected to the drill trigger look like model rocket engines / firecrackers…

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CaliRaisin says:

August 10, 2007 at 11:44 pm

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

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:\\ says:

August 13, 2007 at 5:42 pm

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?!”