Three ideas for life-like machines

 

1. Cabinet Friend


Cabinet friend lives inside your bathroom cabinet. He greets you when you open the door, and will generally coo while you are around, but he is also a very curious fellow. If you take a pill bottle or anything else from a the shelf he can see, he will tilt his head to look at it with interest. When the door is closed it can gesture goodbye.

This could be accomplished by using an IR scanner to get the distance of each item while the person is away and comparing it to the distances when the person is using it. Obviously, this would require a few servos to control the IR scanner and the head.

 

2. Fruit Friend

Fruit Friend likes to hang out in the fruit drawer of your refrigerator. He loves fruit but he also loves company. He can sense when the fridge is open based on the light, and will cry if he has not been visited in a while. If you open the fruit, drawer, though, he will be happy and will offer you a piece of fruit. To help remind you to eat more fruit, you should put the next piece of fruit in his hands so he can offer it to you next time you open the fridge. If you have no fruit and leave him empty handed, he will cry more often, reminding you to get some.

 

3. Door Friend

Door Friend loves to swing on the door. He loves it when people open and close the door and squeals with excitement  when he gets to ride on a swinging door. Of all of these creatures, he is the youngest, and his emotions can be somewhat fickle. If you close or open the door too slowly he’ll get bored, but if you slam the door, he will become scared.

Door friend would use an accelerometer to tell how fast he is going.

 

General Vision

I see of all these little creatures being somewhat simian in nature, and of course somewhat adorable. They are all playful, and need to have the user want to keep them around, so cute helps. Think baby lemur: