Cellular Squirrel Screens Your Calls

Posted by Devin Categories: Accessories, Smartphones

If your cell phone is constantly ringing and you find yourself ending an important conversation abruptly, only to switch to a less important one, the Cellular Squirrel may be for you.  The cute little animatronic squirrel was developed by MIT’s own Stefan Marti as a dissertation project and when it picks up an incoming call, it begins a conversation with the caller and compares the caller’s voice, your contact list, and keywords from it’s conversation with the incoming call with your current conversation and decides if the new call is important enough to pull you away from you current conversation.

This embodiment is able to use the same subtle but still public non-verbal cues to get our attention and interrupt us like humans would do (like eye gaze and small gestures), instead of ringing or vibration. The user can whisper and listen to her squirrel, receiving and replying to voice instant messages. If the user wishes, she can also bypass the Intermediary altogether and get into a synchronous voice communication with the caller by simply talking to the embodiment.

Read More |The Cellular Squirrel via engadget