Via Fabien, AUR: a Robotic Desk Lamp by Guy Hoffman (MIT Medialab Robotic life group):

"AUR is a robotic desk lamp, a collaborative lighting assistant. It serves as a non-anthropomorphic robotic platform as part of my Ph.D thesis on human-robot fluency and nonverbal behavior. The lamp's design was conceived around an existing 5-DoF robotic arm, and is aimed to evoke a personal relationship with the human partner without resorting to human-like features. By retaining the lamp's "objectness", I hope to explore the relationship that can be maintained through abstract gestures and nonverbal behavior alone.

The lamp is animated using a custom pipeline enabling the dynamic control of behaviors authored in a 3d animation system, and will perform in a unique human-robot joint theater performance this spring."

Why do I blog this? looking at human-robot interaction for possible client work, this artifact is interesting to me because it reflects the convergence between robotics and ubiquitous computing. Non-anthropomorphic behavior seems IMO a very relevant approach, leading to projects about a new category of objects.