A rocking chair that persuades elderly people to tell stories about their childhood will help to preserve valuable oral history, according to Jennifer Smith of MIT鈥檚 media lab.
She developed the interactive rocking chair because she regretted not having a way of recording all her grandmother鈥檚 family tales. 鈥淲hen she died we lost all her stories with her,鈥� Smith says.
In Smith鈥檚 system, the elderly person sits on a rocking chair in front of a large screen displaying a life-size, graphic image of a little girl. She tells a story of her own and then asks the person in the rocking chair questions about their life.
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In tests, Smith noticed that people鈥檚 rocking patterns tended to change when they finished a story: 鈥淪ome people come to a stop, while others speed up,鈥� she says. So an accelerometer on the back of the rocking chair monitors movement, feeding information back to a computer that controls what the little girl says and when she says it.
Longer stories
鈥淚 felt she could tell when I didn鈥檛 want to talk and it was time to ask another question,鈥� says Laurie Eberhardt, a grandmother from South Hadley, Massachusetts, who tested the system.
Smith has found that people tell longer and more detailed stories while sitting in the interactive rocking chair than they do when talking to a tape recorder with a list of questions in front of them. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a more sympathetic listener,鈥� says Justine Cassell at MIT鈥檚 media lab, who is developing the system for use with children.
Pressure sensors in the seat of the rocking chair also monitor body movements so that the little girl can be made to lean forwards or backwards, mirroring the body language of the storyteller.
Appropriate sounds
The computer also uses a voice recognition system to decipher the storytelling and the child reacts happily, sadly or in a surprised way to the use of any of 50 keywords.
Smith鈥檚 is the first conversational system to combine word recognition with an algorithm that also recognises intonation: so the little girl nods, or makes an appropriate sound, such as 鈥渦h-huh鈥� or 鈥渉mmm鈥�, at the right time.
鈥淏efore I did that, people would stop talking and say, 鈥業 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 listening,'鈥� says Smith.
The rocking chair is 鈥渘ot the same as having your grandchild on your lap,鈥� says Eberhardt, 鈥渂ut at least she didn鈥檛 get distracted and run away.鈥�