Looks like something I made this morning.
Posted on 03/26/2005 9:45:06 AM PST by srm913
Can't get up? Wake up and find the Clocky Ian Sample, science correspondent It looks annoying, like a furry swiss roll on wheels. Even its name is irritating: Clocky. But that's nothing compared with what it does. Clocky is surely the most infuriating wake-up call ever devised.
Dreamt up by a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it works like this: You hit the snooze button because you are desperate for a few more minutes' sleep. Clocky then rolls off the bedside table and wheels around the bedroom floor bumping into things, before settling on a place to hide.
"When the alarm clock sounds again, the sleeper must get out of bed and search for it," said Gauri Nanda, a research associate at MIT.
"This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off."
Ms Nanda hit upon the idea after struggling to rise in the mornings. "I've been known to hit the snooze bar for up to two hours or even accidentally turn it off. I've known people who put the alarm clock in the living room, but then forget to set it before going to sleep.
"Having the alarm clock hide from me was just the most obvious way I could think of to get out of bed."
Ms Nanda gave her clock a furry covering in the hope it would look endearing and stop people throwing it out of the window in anger.
A built-in microprocessor ensures that Clocky rolls off in a new direction and makes a series of different turns, so that its hiding place changes each morning. Because it uses simple technology, MIT says the clock, which has yet to go into production, would cost less than £15.
Ms Nanda has plans to make a second generation of more intelligent Clockies. If two people sharing a room needed to get up at different times, two Clockies could sound different alarms and even gang up on a serial oversleeper by sounding their alarms simultaneously.
I'd be the first one up on charges for "Clocky abuse".
Oooh, they've got to get this thing on the market ASAP...I know 3 people who would LOVE this for Christmas. :-)
Looks like something I made this morning.
I do need one though...
Here's a more effective method. Feed your dogs first thing in the morning when you wake up. After a couple weeks of this you'll never oversleep again. Whether you like it or not you'll be awakened by whining dogs hungry for their breakfast.
Now who couldn't use one of these?
:-)
When I have to get up at two to be to work by four this thing could come in very handy.
(Undead Smiley.)
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
Good tag-line!
:-)
Oh man! I need that! When's it going to production??
I'll chew on it.
:0)
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
I use that dog method--works fine except on the weekend.
As well, the springer has learned to get me up to feed him, then if I go back to sleep or out, he swears to my wife that he has not been fed until she gives him second breakfasts.
You're right!
LOL!
Mr. Clocky, meet Mr. Glocky...
I've got three dogs, one cat, one wife and two teenage daughters.
I need one of these like I need one less bathroom.
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