Cute Overload: Double-Taker (Snout) Project

I just discovered my old professor Golan Levin had a new project this year, nicknamed Snout.

The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant’s trunk, which responds in unexpected ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity.

The result is something supercute (the schoolchildren waving to it doesn’t hurt this effect either). What’s great is that although it is indeed a giant robot arm, the reactions are so cartoon-like and exaggeratedly human, the emotional feeling is something else entirely.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008, at 5:30 pm. Filed under Industrial Design, Interaction Design, Interactive Environments, Products We Like. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.