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Double-Taker (Snout) Offers Trans-Species Eye Contact
Double-Taker (Snout) is an interactive robotic project using an eight-foot-long industrial robot arm disguised as a gigantic one-eyed inchworm.
The device responds to visitors to the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in unusual ways. A project to gladden the hearts of science fiction fans everywhere, Double-Taker's stated themes are "trans-species eye contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous surveillance."
In the following video, watch Double-Taker (Snout) go for convincing "double-takes" with visitors.
(Double Taker (Snout) Video)
The device is situated on a low roof; real-time machine vision algorithms are used to track the bodies of passers-by; it then orients it's enormous single eye to appear to regard them.
This device strongly reminds me of Bag, the chaperone of Kim Basinger in My Stepmother is an Alien, a 1988 movie also starring Dan Akroyd and Alyson Hannigan. Bag was voiced by Ann Prentiss.
(Bag from My Stepmother is an Alien)
Double-Taker (Snout) was created by Golan Levin with Lawrence Hayhurst, Steven Benders and Fannie White. Via flong.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/2/2008)
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