This Robot Bops Its Owner When They Slouch

It is important to maintain good posture if you want to avoid common problems like back pain and looking like a sloth. Unfortunately, most of us — or at least the kinds of people who are reading articles about silly robots — spend our days sitting in front of a computer. It is all too easy to end up slouching in your desk chair like a partially-melted mannequin. But if BF Skinner taught us anything, it is that anyone can be trained into good behavior with the right motivation. Ionel Pop took that to heart when he built this robot that bops him on the head whenever he starts to slouch in his chair.

BF Skinner’s research may have shown that positive reinforcement is more useful most of the time, but it is hard to deny that negative reinforcement can be a powerful tool under some circumstances. So, instead of building a robot that feeds him tasty snacks when he maintains good posture, Ionel Pop built a robot that physically abuses him when he fails. The robot attaches to the back of his chair and swings a small board at his noggin whenever he begins to slouch. That isn’t a tiny piece of balsa wood or anything; it is a heavy length of board that actually hurts a bit when it bonks Ionel Pop. Naturally, he quickly learned to sit up straight, lest he get brained a bit too frequently.

This robot is mostly cobbled together from wood and PVC pipe. It is controlled by an Arduino Uno development board, which turns the servo motor that swings the board when it detects improper posture. It is able to detect both when Ionel Pop slouches forward and when his arms are situated in a carpal tunnel-inducing manner. It measures the position of his back using a SparkFun ZX Distance and Gesture Sensor, which works using an array of infrared sensors. If his back is too far from the chair, the robot assumes that he is slouching and whacks him.

Detecting arm position is more complicated and Ionel Pop went with computer vision for that job. A webcam attached to his computer points at him from the side. A couple of bright LEDs are attached to his arm, which are easily detected by OpenCV software with a bit of masking. Points are calculated for each LED, which are used to determine his arm position and angle. If those are outside of the acceptable range, the computer sends a command to the Arduino telling it to club Ionel Pop’s head. This may be a bit masochistic, but it also appears to be effective and is hilarious to watch.