The Japanese have invented an ingenious system named “Man on the Curtain” designed to protect women living by themselves. Even though crime is a rare occurrence in Tokyo, it does happen. More often than not, women living alone are the targets of these crimes.
Majority of the Japanese people don’t like living with a roommate and an apartment management company Leo Palace 21 has developed the Man on the Curtain system that uses your smartphone to project full-motion silhouettes of men on window curtains to put off criminals targetting women who live alone.
The Man on the Curtain system consists of a projector that can connect to a smartphone to throw a life-like silhouette of a man on the curtains of the window. When someone looks into the apartment window from the outside they see the shadow of a manly figure performing various activities and are fooled into thinking that a man lives there as well.
This system is better than simply putting a cardboard cutout of a man or a mannequin as it provides a full range of motion. The system has 12 options which were created using real actors performing various routines. These include a man lifting weights, practising shadowboxing or martial arts, and even playing guitar. Each activity is 30 minutes long and when one activity comes to an end, another one begins. This means that the system offers six hours of man time before any of the footage needs to be repeated.
Leo Palace 21 is not planning to make this system commercially available anytime soon but are giving away prototypes to people who fill out their application form. You need to be located in Japan to make use of it for now. If this system becomes a success and gets enough attention, we might see it becoming commercially available, not only for Japan but for the whole world.
You can check it out in the video below:
