Nicole He of New York University (NYU) built the True Love Tinder Robot, a machine that can help people find romance online. The droid senses body reactions to determine a person's feelings and is said to be 100% scientific.
The True Love Tinder Robot can help people find romance on the Tinder app using science. It was built by Nicole He, a student of Interactive Telecommunications Program in NYU, reported Mashable. He put together an Arduino microcontroller board, servos, LED lights, and text-to-speech module to create the robot.
He equipped the droid with an artificial hand connected to wires and mounted on a box with built-in speaker. He placed a mat made of metal sheets in front of the box where the user will place his or her hands. With the Tinder app activated, the mechanical hand swipes on the phone's screen to show potential dates to the user.
The droid senses the user's feelings by reading the galvanic skin response (GSR) over time. It was reported that GSR is how the skin in the palms sweat when a person sees something he or she likes.
The artificial hand swipes either 'yes' or 'no' based on the user's reactions as per CNET's report. The robot says the following to the user: "Judge this person", "Determine if this person has any value", and "Can you see yourself spending your life with this person?"
When asked if the machine is scientific, He wrote on her website that it is "definitely, absolutely, 100% no doubt." She played on the concepts of people's reliance to algorithms in dating sites for searching romance and dependence on consumer biometric devices for monitoring health.
"The project explores the idea that the computer knows us better than we know ourselves, and therefore it has better authority on who we should date than we do," said He. "In a direct way, the True Love Tinder Robot makes the user confront what it feels like to let computers make intimate decisions for us."
The True Love Tinder Robot was created as He's final project for Introduction to Physical Computing and Introduction to Computational Media Classes. The droid will be exhibited on the ITP Winter Show on December 20 or 21.
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