Michael Reeves’ Obsession with Tasers Continues with a Where’s Waldo? Electric Chair

There is a definite trend in the maker community going on at the moment where tasers are used as punishment when some arbitrary task isn’t successfully completed. YouTuber Michael Reeves is largely responsible for that trend, thanks to projects like Tazer Tag and the taser-equipped beer mug. It seems that Reeves isn’t going to stop milking that laugh cow anytime soon, as proven by his most recent build: an electric chair that tazes you if you take too long to find Waldo.

Reeves got the idea for this project after seeing a robot with an artificial intelligence that was trained to find the eponymous character in Where’s Waldo (or Where’s Wally if you’re British). We featured that robot a couple of years back, and its ability to locate Waldo in just a few seconds was very impressive. But Reeves figured humans could do better if they had the proper motivation. According to his research, humans take an average of about 10 seconds to find Waldo. The robot can find him in about five seconds. To close that gap, Reeves just needed to use some negative reinforcement to nudge test subjects towards success.

Reeves started by building an electric chair using a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) unit and a gaming chair. The TENS unit electrodes are attached to the chair’s armrests in order to make contact with the subject’s skin. Shocks are controlled by a Raspberry Pi single-board computer, which receives a signal over a wireless network from a nearby computer. That computer has an eye-tracking sensor that can tell which part of the screen the user is looking at. When they look directly at Waldo for a moment, they win. If they don’t spot Waldo before the timer runs out, they get a shock. Predictably, this didn’t actually improve performance. It was probably the opposite. But, as with all of Michael Reeves videos, it sure is fun to watch.