Want to liven up your workspace and make it more animated? Enter Pinokio, an animatronic desk lamp inspired by the Luxo lamp that lives inside the Pixar logo. Created by Adam Ben-Dror, Shanshan Zhou, and Joss Doggett — all students at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand — the Pinokio lacks the ability to hop, but it does move and react to its environment. Built-in software that recognizes and tracks faces works with an Arduino board, a hacked webcam, mechanical iris and a set of six servo motors that results in a fascinatingly expressive desk lamp that’s capable of playing hide and seek. Check out Pinokio in action the video below.
