Carnegie Mellon student turns objects into needy AI pets
a carnegie mellon student created oat, an ai powered device that gives everyday objects expressive personalities, encouraging better habits. it affects users who want to care for virtual pets linked to physical objects.
daehwa kim, a fifth-year phd student in carnegie mellon's future interfaces group, created object agent twins, or oats, which are micro-agent ai avatars on tiny e ink displays designed to pair with everyday household objects. oats have an e ink display connected to internal and external sensors that track things like moisture, temperature, humidity, light, occupancy, and motion. the sprites are created with google gemini's nano banana image-generation service, creating a suite of emotions for various states based on the sensor data. kim distributed oats to many people and found that they use them in three different ways, including checking if they are being used.