Really eating together
Robb Mitchell, Alexandra Papadimitriou, Youran You, Laurens Boer · 2015
Eating is one of the most social of human activities; yet, scant attention has been paid to coordinating meal completion speeds. Addressing this challenge, we present "Keep Up With Me" - a novel augmented dining table designed to guide diners in keeping pace with each other. This mechatronical table incorporates a mechanism to gauge the relative weight of food on the dishes of dining partners. Actuators gradually raise the dish of a slower eating partner, and lower the dish of a faster eater by a corresponding amount. These discrete signals may iteratively bring the eating pace of dining companions back into mutual alignment. This table is offered as a contribution toward discussions around the subtle augmentation of dining and social experiences.