A Japanese IT engineer has developed a creepy night lamp that crawls on robotic spider legs and leads you to the toilet in the middle of the night.
On June 5th, Twitter user Ianius shared a short clip of his newest creation, a walking nightlamp run by motorized robot spider legs. The lamp is commercially available, but the legs it stands on were created and assembled by Ianius, whose passion is robotics.
The idea for the lamp came to Ianius while brainstorming for a way to put his 3D-printed robotic legs to good use. He had already put them on toy boxes for his two young children! As a father of two, he was reminded of his own childhood, when he was terrified of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and the idea of a guiding night lamp came into his mind.
“I think it can contribute to a sense of security as a reliable partner who walks with me in the dark,” Ianius told HuffPost Japan about his unique lamp, but most of the people who saw it in action in a 23-second video posted on Twitter disagreed. They found it creepy or downright disturbing and said that it would only make their night-time trip to the toiled even scarier.
Ianius stated that he bought the lamp from the store but most of the components for the legs are his 3D-printed custom designs. Although he plans to work on a lamp that can move autonomously, the current version is only remote-controlled via a Bluetooth-connected joystick.
In just 3 days, Ianius short clip featuring his custom night lamp has received over 227,000 likes on Twitter alone and has been retweeted 50,000 times.
