Oh those precocious scamps at MIT’s Media Lab, what’ll they imagineer next? Perhaps a phone-screening robo-squirrel? Too silly to be true? Gotta be a prank? Nope, real as rain.
Stefan Marti is working on a robot (housed inside of a stuffed animal) that can receive your mobile phone calls, talk to the caller, consult a “friends” list, and even read your body language to determine whether to put the call through to you (via a built-in speaker phone) or politely send the caller to voice-mail. If the robo-squirrel thinks you should take the call, he starts vibrating with varying levels of intensity depending on a determination of how much you might like to talk to the caller. So, if he’s rockin’ so hard, his fur starts flying off, it’s probably FiestyNrrrd, that hot grrrl you’ve been chatting up on MySpace. Of course, she’s gonna dump your ass like a roaming call when she finds out that you have an electronic furry screening your calls. Even a riot grrrl knows when the techno-fetishism’s gone too far.