“Corona has changed our lives: it requires us to physicially distance, which in turn leads to social distancing. So what could be a solution? Maybe a pet? But no, Corona comes from animals. Let’s save ourselves from another Corona 2.0. But if we have to keep away from humans (to not infect and not be infected) and animals but remain the social beings we are, what should we do?
Have no despair! We have found a solution: the moving OLOID a.k.a. mOLOID. It combines interesting geometry (a bit nerdy but nerdy is trendy!) with many aspects of pets: it can make you smile, moves on its own, makes cute sounds and listens to you - at least most of the time. In the following we will show you how to build it yourself, so you can have a pet without any of the pet dangers. Watch out though - you could get an electric shock, which you usually would not get from a living pet!
(This project was developed by Jan Ingo Haller and Lorin Samija as part of the Computational Design and Digital Fabrication Seminar in the Master’s programme Integrative Technologies and Architectural Design Research (ITECH) at the University of Stuttgart)”