Robotic Alarm Clock Rolls Away and Hides

Mon Apr 11, 3:22 PM ET



By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Before you hit the snooze button a second time on this alarm clock, you'll have to hunt it down.

The shag carpet-covered robotic alarm clock on wheels, called Clocky, rolls away and hides.

The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student — and occasional oversleeper — who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"I've been known to hit the snooze bar for a couple hours, wake up two hours later and be completely shocked," said Nanda, 25, who created Clocky for an industrial design course last year.

She made a prototype out of foam, a pair of wheels and a circuit board connected to small motors. "It is programmed to tell the motors to move randomly, to generate random speeds and directions so that the clock ends up in a new place every day," she said.

Nanda's adviser, V. Michael Bove Jr., said hundreds of people interested in buying or selling the clocks have called and e-mailed. But the gadget is not yet available for sale.

Nanda is thinking of starting her own business to manufacture and market the clock.

MIT owns the intellectual property rights to Clocky and other student inventions, but Bove said Nanda would receive a share of any revenue generated.

Nanda said she wanted Clocky to remind its owners of a troublesome pet.

"The idea really was to use technology in a more playful way," she said. "It's sort of like a hide-and-seek game."




http://story.news.yahoo.c...seek_alarm

LAME

i'm pretty good at getting up when the alarm goes off, but i'd like one of those just so i'd have something to curse at and chase around when i wake up. it would get the blood pumping.

you'd end up just running after it, hittin the snooze button and going back to bed anyway. that and you'd end up tossing it out due to gettin sick of running after it all the time.

That would drive me fucking nuts

My cure for oversleeping is allowing 30 minutes for snoozing when I set the clock & if I really get to bed late & fear I'll oversleep I set a second clock (cell phone). With shit going off every 5 minutes it's hard to oversleep, fuck all that getting out the bed chasing shit



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[Edited 4/12/05 8:26am]