Monster Phidget

Monster Phidget greets people as they walk by e.g., "hey, how's it going" or "good day sir". If someone stops in front of Monster, he responds with something like "cool, you're hanging out eh?" and then tells jokes (laughs and drum rolls included). When the person leaves, monster says something like "catch ya later". If someone pulls on Monster’s mouth, it responds with a short phrase from the Monsters Inc. movie.

At its heart is a simple servo motor connected to the back of a Mike Wazowski toy (from the movie Monsters Inc) to move Mike's one eye. A touch sensor connected to the bottom of the foot determines if someone was pressing the Monster or pulling its mouth. A proximity sensor determines how close a person was to Monster. A simple state machine was designed in software to allow Monster to determine if someone walked by or if someone was hanging around.

The Creator

Edward Tse created this for his short assignment as part a senior-level human computer interaction class at the University of Calgary.
see the video

Created in March, 2001

Next exhibit: Mood table