Posted on 04/13/2005 11:28:30 AM PDT by presidio9
Before you hit the snooze button a second time on this alarm clock, you'll have to hunt it down.
The shag carpet-covered robotic alarm clock on wheels, called Clocky, rolls away and hides.
The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student - and occasional oversleeper - who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I've been known to hit the snooze bar for a couple hours, wake up two hours later and be completely shocked," said Nanda, 25, who created Clocky for an industrial design course last year.
She made a prototype out of foam, a pair of wheels and a circuit board connected to small motors. "It is programmed to tell the motors to move randomly, to generate random speeds and directions so that the clock ends up in a new place every day," she said.
Nanda's adviser, Michael Bove, said hundreds of people interested in buying or selling the clocks have called and e-mailed. But the gadget is not yet available for sale.
Nanda is thinking of starting her own business to manufacture and market the clock.
MIT owns the intellectual property rights to Clocky and other student inventions, but Bove said Nanda would receive a share of any revenue generated.
Nanda said she wanted Clocky to remind its owners of a troublesome pet.
"The idea really was to use technology in a more playful way," she said. "It's sort of like a hide-seek game."
I need one of these
Just remembered the old 50's game show "Beat The Clock"....a whole new game idea here....
I need one also.
but mine had better be a bit smarter than random combos of speeds and directions. MIT was deep in behavioral paradigm programming a few years back. Add that to the mobile carriage, and add some armor plate, and this roboclock'd be a winner.
This girl has a future!
who else besides me needs something along these lines?
bump!
It would only hide once.
Oh yeah, that's JUST what I need in the AM, before coffee.
I hope they make it Louisville Slugger-proof.
I detest alarm clocks!
Wouldn't work for me. I would hunt it and kill it.
make it shriek in fear and scurry away from the swat.
seriously.
or make it so that you have to catch it before you can shut it up, and make it so that it uses motion sensors to tell if you are really up after swatting it...
dang. this idea has potential.
Just make an amarm clock that had electrodes hooked to it that will shock the heck out of you if you hav that hard of time getting out of bed.
If it's programmed with the voices of Hillary and Eleanor Clift, I'll be breaking a sweat hunting it down.
Not interested, my prostate takes care of my waking needs :)
Thank God for flex time! I'm never late and I can count on one hand the times I needed to use an alarm clock in the last 7 yrs.
Funny!!!
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