Tech Digest: Bluetooth Squirrel to handle calls

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Bluetooth Squirrel to handle calls

It seems that soon secretarial work will be delegated to stuffed animals if pioneering work from the MIT Media Lab comes to fruition. The pic shows a 6” tall novelty toy that can be responsible for handling incoming phone calls. The squirrel is aimed at solving the problem of mobile phones interrupting important conversations by ringing at the least convenient moment. The solution is two-fold: firstly, the squirrel is capable, through extensive animatronics, of attracting attention to itself by sitting up, opening its eyes and gyrating manically. Secondly, and this is the more alarming aspect, the squirrel will engage in conversation with the incoming caller to establish the importance of the call based around keywords and the caller ID (presumably saying "answer the phone or you're fired" will get the call put straight through).

There’s no indication of how exactly the squirrel will converse with the caller but I really hope it’s nauseatingly cute. The clever part is that, in order to fit all this ability into so small a device, the squirrel is Bluetooth enabled so that the real processing aspects are handled by the computer and not the squirrel itself. So it is effectively just a computer program and a weird alternative to a ring tone or vibration function, oh well, at least there’s a rabbit version in the works too…

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July 18, 2005 in Mobile phones | Permalink