Thursday, May 17, 2007

This video, highlighting the capabilities of a roving massage robot, is inadvertently creepy. For one thing, the woman receiving the massage appears lifeless; the bot, with its ergonomic rubber treads, moves across her back like an indecisive scavenger.

Maybe it's just me.



(Thanks to Next Nature.)
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nah, it's not just you, Mac. I see and feel what you're talking about, too. It has a kind of child-like, innocent, but deeply Kafka-esque, Burroughsian look and movement to it---uhh...does that description inspire too much cognitive dissonance or is it just counter-intuitive? Regardless:

Note this "Tickle" device is "Prototype #3", according to the beginning credits citing the German inventors or company ("Driessens & Verstappen 2007") that produced it. Certainly wouldn't provide much of a massage. Might be fun for some parent and their baby to put it on the infant's belly for a mild tickle and laugh. If the kid didn't start crying or screaming, that is! Hmmm...on the other hand...might make a great YouTube video, either way! Heh!

By the way it moves about, and stops itself before falling off the moribund woman's back, it must have a mercury switch-based sensor that detects when it's going off the horizontal. I wonder what prototypes 1 and 2 did? Images of the "Crusher" and "Shiatsu Exciter" come to mind. Maybe I'll hire a special-effects company to "modify" a few of these prototypes with ghastly, mask-like, insectoidal outer shells for use in my next movie...

Somebody verstappen me! @%O

5:26 AM
Mac said...

It resembles a Mars rover as devised by fetishists on Cronenberg's payroll . . .

10:14 PM

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