Who needs romance when you’ve got a Tinder robot that can swipe right or left on your behalf?
Nicole He, a graduate student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, built a tool that lets a robot make your Tinder swiping decisions based on your sweaty palms.
The True Love Tinder Robot project combines two aspects of popular technology: dating based on algorithms and wearables with sensors that track our movement. You simply place your phone in front of the robotic hand and put your own hands on the sensors in front of it. Its sensors analyze your galvanic skin response (the electrical characteristics of your skin) and tell the robot hand to swipes right or left with its thumb depending on how sweaty your palms get when you look at a person.
While the bot pokes fun at the current state of romance, its droll, robotic voice offers commentary on the physical act of swiping right, perhaps making you think twice about how you go about finding partners.
“Judge this person,” she says. “Determine if this person has any value.”
On her blog, He said she found the inspiration for the robotic hand’s personality in GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence with passive-aggressive humor in the video game Portal.
While True Love Tinder Robot is a not-so-scientific look at the desires of the heart, it does pose an interesting question about whether and how robots and technology could influence relationships by making dating even less human.
The code for He’s robot, which she built using Arduino, is available on GitHub.
Photo via Nicole He/Vimeo
