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Every halloween there are a bunch of poor kids that dress as "Planet of the Apes" and wear limp cotton tails. It disappoints me to see them wearing these tails because tails never hang limp in nature, and they didn't hang limp in the movie, either, if I'm not mistaken.
I propose a dynamic tail,
kind of like a Segway, that attaches to your body on a belt, and is driven by an onboard computer (like a calculator, not a dell), a small gyroscope, and some batteries.
Basically, the gyro is hooked up to sensors that constantly feed information on the body's movement to the tail. Whenever the person moves, the movement gets instantly recognized by the computer and the computer send a response to the tail.
A semi-rigid tail would contain ribbons of a material that expands or contracts in propotion to the electrical current running through it. This way, when the person wearing the tail turns left, the tail reacts naturally to the movement by curling around the left side of the wearer.
If it was programmed well enough, the tail could give certain types of athletes an edge while manouvering. If it wasn't, it would just look really cool.
this is one mighty tale.
http://www.halfbake...a/Tails_20For_20All
[po, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
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What happens when the kid sits on it? |
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On that Segway note; give it enough mass, horsepower and computing power and maybe it could serve the purpose of helping people with balancing problems keep from losing their balance. |
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When the kid sits, the tail would tuck itself underneath their body, between their legs. |
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In that case, if George Bush was wearing one when he choked on a pretzel, he may have missed the coffee table and spared himself the embarrassment of confessing to the nation a snack almost killed him. |
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Very nice first idea. Welcome to the HB. |
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People wearing tails all the time might serously impact furniture design. The chair I'm sitting in right now would most certainly need some modification, and I shudder to think that my comfy comfy couch would suddenly become a hellish pain-giver... |
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//the tail would tuck itself underneath their body, between their legs//... is that an electric tail or... |
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You could supplement these tails with electronic transceivers that communicated with other units in the vicinity. Bio sensors on the wearers would measure pulse rate, galvanic skin response, pheromone output etc and use this information to estimate the relative social status of both wearers, placing the respective wearer's tails in the proper positions to reflect this. If the person felt subordinate to someone, they'd get all sweaty and nervous and the tail would tuck between their legs, alpha male types would have their tail up all the time, friendly people's tails would be wagging etc. A more detailed lcd display readout of the persons bio-sensor derived social status info could be placed under the tail on the posterior of the wearer. This would necessitate others bending down and nuzzling up close if they wished to get a more detailed insight into that person such as during a first meeting. |
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