Smart Sofa Recognizes Occupants by Weight

I am Kobayashi writes "According to CNN.com scientists at Trinity College in Dublin have created my dream couch. And yes, I admit to being a couch potato... Apparently the couch can be programmed with a personal greeting (it recognizes you by weight), and the scientists hope that it will one day be able to automatically tune to your favorite television programs, order you take out food, and control other household appliances."

Comments

Weight fluctuates and people can weigh the same

[Dancin_Santa]

And is it really a good idea to have furniture that can positively ID you?

I don't get it.

[John_McKee]

OK, am I the only person that doesn't get it? First a side note, it isn't even a sofa, it is more like a old medical exam table, but I digress. Sofa's traditionally are for more than one occupant, so how would it deal with more than one person on it? Furthermore, ignoring the fact that it would be near impossible to get an accurate identity based only on the weight on a sofa, how is it really useful? My sofa knows I'm on it, what does it do for me? It can't really adjust any preferences for devices around me in a manner that is useful, I use my sofa for tons of diffrent uses, having guests over, reading, watching tv, surfing on my laptop, and all of those are would fail to benfit from my sofa knowing that I personally am on it. It just seems like the solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Not quite

[tessaiga]

Before many of you run amok, and make fun of heavy people, please read the article. It's in development, and has plans to be used to assist the elderly and those in hospitals. This is not some way to keep people indoors, or track their TV habits, or any of the other conspiracy baloney that will sure to be brought up soon.

I wouldn't put too much credibility in these "applications" just yet - I suspect this is what's known in the business world as having a solution, and fishing for a problem. As the project stands at the moment, there's no way this can be used in public spaces in hospitals or nursing homes, for the simple reason that weight isn't a sufficiently unique identifier. Once you have a large number of people using the couch, the probability of confusing two people of similar weight shoots through the roof.

Nor would it be effective to place one in each room and use it to track patients, as the article suggests, unless (1) your facility had cash to burn, and didn't feel like looking into more cost-effective solutions, and (2) you were planning to enforce the policy that none of the patients/residents were allowed to leave the sofa.

I suspect that this is more like one of those "Offbeat" stories they have at CNN every once in a while -- funny and cutesy in a "what will they think of next" kinda way, but not something you'll ever hear of again.

Re:Hi, Cindy, want the same as last time?

[saden1]

Oh great, a new way for Americans to get fat. Kill your TV and read a book or go exercise for god sake.

Maybe I'm missing something...

[lelnet]

...but I'm trying to figure out just what this feature would be good for.

It's cool that a room can know who I am (to set the preferred lighting level or whatnot), but why should a couch care? To show me what I want to watch on TV? That's a pretty complex algorithm that's taken me weeks to more-or-less teach to my TiVO...I don't want to have to teach it to my couch too. I despair of ever having furniture that can guess when I'll want to eat (let alone what), since even my GF hasn't proven too adept at that task.

What, other than "because it'd be cool to do", is the motivation for this project? (Not that being cool to do is a bad motivation...but it doesn't provide any reason for the rest of us to care.)

Application: Car seats

[crow]

Where this would be useful is remembering settings for car seats (and mirrors). Cars already do this using different codes on keys, but this might be a better mechanism.

Still, as other people mentioned, it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.