14 DAY TRIAL // No, we're not talking about a squirrel that can use a mobile phone, if that's what you first thought. It's a little fluffy toy, which actually hides a very sophisticated technology under its seemingly innocent looks.
The Cellular Squirrel is the invention of a scientist from MIT, Stefan Marti, who has worked within MIT Media Labs and has developed this device as part of his dissertation project, as reported by mobileburns.com.
The Squirrel itself is a Bluetooth device that uses a remote PC for its computing power, though future models would be autonomous. When a call comes in, the animatronic squirrel will "wake up" and it will then start engaging the remote caller in a conversation in an effort to determine what the call is about, and if it is important enough to disrupt the conversation going on in its area.
The device makes this determination by listening to the conversation around it, trying to pick up key subject words that it can use to compare with what the inbound caller seeks to discuss. The number of the caller is also compared with an internal list of numbers belonging to "friends", and the tone of the caller's voice is evaluated.
If the Cellular Squirrel determines that the caller's request is important enough, it will start to gyrate its body in an effort to get the attention of the call recipient. At this point the user can squeeze one of its upper paws to accept the call and access it via a Bluetooth speakerphone function, or squeeze a lower paw to send the call to voicemail, just as the squirrel itself would do if it felt the call was unimportant.
The device is a very interesting one, and if you want to find out more about the "cellular squirrel", please visit http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefanm/phd/cellularsquirrel/.