Google is working towards a patent for a sweet-looking new toy with eyes that can track your movement and ears to listen to what users are saying, before sending commands to remote computer servers.
The new patent for sensor-packed dolls and toys was filed in 2012, describes how the toys would include microphones, speakers, cameras and motors as well as a wireless connection to the internet.
From here, it gets more and more creepy. One word would cause them to wake up and turn their gaze towards the person addressing them, and they would be able to make eye contact.
The device could respond both by speaking back and by expressing “human-like” expressions of interest, curiosity, boredom and/or surprise.
“To express interest, an anthropomorphic device may open its eyes, lift its head and/or focus its gaze on the user, ” the inventor Richard Wayne DeVaul wrote in the description. “To express curiosity, [it] may tilt its head, furrow its brow, and/or scratch its head with an arm.”
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DeVaul, is a “director of rapid evolution and mad science” at the secretive lab Google X.
