In a continuing effort to expand the frontiers of human knowledge, mostly by making normal people say “What th?”, the French have come up with a plan to have a robot painter interpret how people sleep.
Yep. That’s exactly what I said too.
In other words, ever wondered how what you do on a mattress might look like if painted by a robot?
Ok, so you’ve never wondered about that until now. You are wondering now. Before you start thinking about late night movies, know this. The mattress for these robot art project is equipped with remote sensors. There are no cameras, unless you bring one.
I am not making this up. The France-based hotel chain Ibis is staging this project at hotels in Europe. People have to visit Facebook to sign up. People will be selected at random to participate, kind of like jury duty, except in England the food will be worse.
Ibis is not saying if the robots have a snooty attitude, wear a beret and striped shirt, eat snails and drink wine while they paint. Being French,
it’s pretty safe to assume the robots will surrender for no reason at all.
Called the “Sleep Art Project,” some 40 guests will sleep, or at least attempt to sleep, on beds hooked up to 80 sensors which will transmit data, sound and temperature to a robot with a paintbrush. The robots will then use the input to create a unique acrylic painting. Being French, the paintings will immediately be worth more than US senator and make as much sense as
said senator.
Information the bed sensors gather is transmitted to a studio in Paris where the robots will work and presumably complain vigorously about any Americans participating in the project.
Exactly what the robots will paint remains to be seen, obviously. I can imagine the robots sitting around a table smoking and drinking wine and saying “Eet eez ahrt. You cannot define eet. You must live eet. These Americans, they are philistines and cannot understand the higher, noble purpose.” Then a much bigger German robot shows up and the artist robots
surrender.
The first round of painting is set for the Paris Ibis hotel. People have already been selected to stay in the rooms. For the life of me I can’t think of anything funny to say about this.
So far Ibis has not said anything about how movement affects the robot. A lot of people are going to wonder how the robots will interpret what William Shakespeare (and since I quote him directly and it is literature you can’t
get mad at me) “making the beast with two backs.”
Presumably, the sleepers will get to keep the robot artwork, but no news story about the project has specifically quoted anyone from the hotel chain saying this is the case.
I’m looking forward to someone developing a robot writer. Hook up sensors to the bed, go to sleep and while I sleep a robot types up a column for next week. Some people will say that column would certainly make a lot more sense than the stuff I write.
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