THR_33 (Tea House for Robots) is comprised of a responsive environment
and a group of robotically-enhanced domestic appliances. Imagine if your
radio could tune into any frequency that had ever been broadcast. What
would we hear? Imagine if your toaster could remember how you liked your
toast, or your entire family’s preferences. What if your kitchen mixer
could prepare ingredients based on downloadable techniques and recipes –
where you just choose the recipe/technique, add the ingredients and it
does the rest? What if household appliances in the future recharged at
solar powered light wells and required time to play in order to learn?The ‘tea house’ structure conforms to the traditional dimensions of a
Japanese tea house of 9’ x 9’ x 6′, the space provides a series of
interactions between user and space, space and robots. The tea house
“eyes” are driven by the OMRON Smile Scan. The Smile Scan uses OMRON’s
OKAO Vision face-sensing technology. This technology relies on facial
data gathered from over 1 million people, accumulated through over 10
years of study of the human face. The system measures the degree of a
person’s smile from a camera-recorded facial image based on key point
movements from 0% to 100%. In THR_33 this percentage controls how much
the tea house “eyes” open. The tea house skin was laser cut and
‘stitched’ together. The skin is made from 2 layers of precisely cut
synthetic paper pieces that interlock with each other.