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?!”

Leave a Reply to ShadymanCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.