Green Monster
I am a sea onion plant living near windows. I become tense when I need water, and I express a happy face when they take good care of me.
watertemperaturehumiditylight
OATs: Object-Agent Twins
Expressive Micro-Agent Avatars for Inanimate Everyday Objects
Carnegie Mellon University
Hi! OATs are agentic twins that brings everyday inanimate objects to life. There may be many inanimate objects that you meet every day: bed, water tap, toilet, coffee cup, fridge, drawer, book, camera, chair, workout dumbbell, plant, pill case, water bottle, 3D printer, grocery potatoes… With OATs, you can make them expressive. Check out some examples below.
Mr. Refrigerator
I am a refrigerator in a shared office space. When people use me, I feel happy because I can help them. When no one uses me, I get bored.
motion
Heater Man
I am an space heater. I get frustrated when heating is wasted, like when the room becomes warmer than necessary or when I am heating the space even though no one is around. I feel content in perfect temperature!
temperatureoccupancy
Setting up your OATs
We introduce a toolkit that enables non-expert users to easily, expressively, and rapidly create small Tamagotchi-like companions for inanimate objects in their everyday lives. Here are simple steps.
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STEP 1
Connect it to your Wi-Fi
Turn the OAT on by long-pressing the power button. You can also double-press the boot button while the device is on to enter this mode. As it boots up, follow the instructions on the screen:
- Open the Wi-Fi settings on your phone or laptop and connect to the network named OAT-[device id].
- While still connected to this Wi-Fi, open a browser and go to http://192.168.4.1.
- Type in your home Wi-Fi info.
- Press Connect. The OAT will reboot, and you will finish setup on your OAT page:
https://oats.daehwakim.com/[your device id]
OAT Wi-Fi setup -
STEP 2
Name it and make its avatar
Now let's really set up our OAT! When you open https://oats.daehwakim.com/[your device id], you will see a Setup OAT button. You can assign a name to your OAT. Describe what the host object is in the Who am I? field. If you specify its appearance, it will be reflected when you generate the avatar.
Host object name and avatar -
STEP 3
Choose its senses
Choose the sensors that you think are important for the host object's life. There are two internal sensors and four external sensors.
- Air temperature (internal)
- Air humidity (internal)
- Motion: measures the motion of the sensor body
- Water / soil: measures the water level. Place it inside the water or soil.
- Light intensity: measures how strong the environmental light is
- Occupancy: measures motion in the environment. This is the type of sensor that automatically turns on the light when you enter a bathroom or office.
Don't forget to physically connect the sensors before pressing Next!
Sensor selection 
For external sensors, plug them into the back of the device. Note that for the occupancy sensor only, the black cable is connected to GND, not B. -
STEP 4
Review its behavior
When you press Next after sensor selection, we will generate a template of example OAT behavior for you. This process takes some time. Feel free to modify this template behavior.
OAT's behavior in positive and negative situations -
STEP 5
Let it grow its emotions
When you complete the setup, OATs will finish up the emotion generation. This takes about 10 minutes. Please wait until you see the Go Back to Main Page button.
OAT's emotion -
STEP 6
Restart and hatch
The OAT's screen will show "If done, long-press the power button to restart". When you turn it on, it will download all files. Please wait until you see the avatar face.
Download files and hatch to the world!
Living with your OATs
OAT updates its status either when you make environmental changes (e.g., water the plant) or every hour.
You can open your main page, https://oats.daehwakim.com/[your device id], to see the status of your OAT and why it feels that way.
Disclaimer. OATs is currently at its very first prototype, and many things are not optimized. The battery lasts about 3–4 days without the sound level sensor. With the sound level sensor, it probably lasts only 1 day.
