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[ShadowFox]

There are few things more intrusive than a mobile phone ringtone.

Yet, despite the existence of answer phones and voice mail, a ringing phone remains impossible to ignore.

Whether we are having a private conversation, snowed under with work, or just not in the mood to speak to anyone, the phone keeps ringing.

MIT research student Stefan Marti may have the answer: ditch your mobile phone, and get a squirrel.

Specifically, an animatronic desktop squirrel which deals with your calls for you. The squirrel answers phone calls, works out if you are busy or asleep, evaluates how important the incoming call is and takes messages.

When it wants to alert its owner to a call, it waves and moves about rather than making a sound. And, it is ridiculously cute.

Emotional intelligence

Currently, the squirrel prototype needs to communicate with a computer and so is tied to a physical location, but there is no reason that the technology could not eventually fit into something the size of a mobile phone.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] In previous incarnations, the device has been a bunny and a parrot. The idea, says Mr Marti, is to dress the technology up as something which we would be happy talking down to.

"If you have a less intelligent metaphor that you base your interface on, humans are less likely to be disappointed with the limits of the interaction," he told the BBC News website.

The key principle behind the Autonomous Interactive Intermediary (AII), or "cellular squirrel", is that machines should display what psychologists call social or emotional intelligence.

In other words, a computer should be able to communicate information in a way which is responsive to the social situations around it.

Mobile phones were the perfect candidate for this approach, says Mr Marti.

"Since we are using it on the go, our social settings are changing continuously, but our mobile communication devices do not adapt."



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Source: BBC News