Product designer Neil Usher has built a robot that aims to "improve the efficiency of our leisure time" by automatically scanning for faces in clouds.
Usher describes the robot, called the Nimbus MkIII, as automating pareidolia -- the psychological phenomenon of ascribing significance to random or vague patterns in nature. Famous examples are the man in the moon, or hearing hidden messages on records being played backwards.
Another example is spotting shapes in clouds. Usher's pareidolic robot scans the sky for patterns that resemble faces and, when it spots one, takes a photo.
He explains on the Design Interactions 2012 website: "Robots are designed to perform precise and repetitive operations with relentless efficiency, performing the tasks we find too laborious or dangerous. However, could these robots be deployed to improve the efficiency of our leisure time by performing tasks we enjoy?"
He adds: "Could intelligent machines bird watch for us or look for four-leaf clovers? Could they optimise our pastimes, searching for patterns and spectacle in nature that would be imperceptible or too time-consuming for us to find for ourselves?"