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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."
"Cindy? Who is Cindy? No, honest honey, I have no idea who Cindy is. What's this couch talking about! ?"
It won't be able to recognize you by weight if it continues to do absolutely everything for you, like ordering food and changing the channel on the TV without requiring you to get up...
I wonder if they built an AI into it to intelligently determine who the occupant is by weight gain over time...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Science: Pushing the boundaries of sloth, one invention at a time.
...will be released as the La-Z-Homer 3000.
I, for one, welcome our new sofa overlords.
So say I sit down with my backpack on may lap, it gets me wrong. Or if a kid/cat/dog jumps on my lap.
:)
Or kids jump on the couch and break it.
Or 2 kids sit next to each other in the space it takes to fit me, and the TV tunes it to my favorite porn station
or I lose a few pounds and it tunes me in to my wife's favorite shows...
This sounds pretty crappy to me
no comment
So... it's an uncomfortable couch with a $10 digital scale built in?
...or a couch made of mouse pads.
And they got on CNN? Obviously the rest of us just aren't trying hard enough.
Real geeks don't want that couch, they want funny-looking ergonomic sofas or something with a built-in stereo and drink holder.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
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.
My mom says I'm cool.
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.
Now the wife isn't the only one to tell you to lose weight.
Just imagine watching the superbowl, when you pick up a chip. Only to have your couch tell you "Put down the chip chubby."
i can see potential problems already.
say i'm sitting on the couch... some loose change falls out of my pocket.... i get up...
now the couch thinks my leperchaun is sitting there and plays the irish channel all day long. that would be so annoying.
from their prototype that required you to place a 12 ounce, specially modified bluetooth tranciever up your ass.
Great, just what I need.
So say I sit down with my backpack on may lap, it gets me wrong.
Clippy: So, you gain 20 pounds in just 2 days. Would you like to:
[ ] Enroll as sumo wrestler (you are qualified now)
[ ] Enroll in Taco Gym
[ ] Cowboyneal!
[ ] All of above
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Error 500: Internal sig error
Even my furniture says it hardly recognizes me.
"Get up and take out the trash like you said you were going to THREE DAYS AGO YOU WORTHLESS BUM!!"
Or..
"If I find another porno in the DVD player you're not getting any for a month!"
Or..
"Honey, I'm sorry but I'm leaving you for Mandingo. I hope you and your couch have a happy life together YOU LAZY SONOFABITCH!!"
This could be bad. Very bad...
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
My experience is that every member of our family has his dedicated seat and always sits on the same couch even when he/her is alone.
Those lucky of you who live with your wife/girlfriend and have 'your own' couch, does your partner really use it when you are not there?
Maybe a simple 'ass present' sensor would be sufficient..
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I'm a-huga bimbo
"Your honor, I did it because my husband hacked the sofa to say 'whoah, one at a time!' whenever I sat down on it."
"Judgement in favor of the defendent: Justifiable homicide."
"Derp de derp."
If people can be identified to some degree by weight alone, I'm sure that having a pressure-sensitive map of someone's weight distribution (butt print) could only be more accurate. Also, you can learn something identifiable by how specific people slouch or lie down, how much they lean back, and other behavioral traits like antsiness. Though detecting these traits would be far more complicated than putting a scale under each pillow.
Maybe the pillows wouldn't detect weight itself, but the shape of the imprentation using lots of small censors that detect motion. That motion could be integrated (calculus) to calculate their current position. The individual data points could be used together to figure out someone's current position, how their weight is distributed, and how much they move around over time. However, are there affordable censors that can do that? Alternatively, are there censors that can somehow know their absolute location rather than using calculus?
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