Goal

The goal of the Avateam connected intimacy device was to allow two people to display their statuses to each other in a way that is fun to interactive, but not too obtrusive in everyday life. The device allows the partners to display three states: available (standing), busy (sitting), and asleep (laying down). The current position of your avatar is displayed on the right of the figurine using a simple RGB led interface, with green meaning available, red meaning busy, and purple meaning asleep. The current position of your partners avatar is displayed on the left of the figurine using the same logic.  

Function

To enable the interaction between the two devices, we used two sets of infrared beam break sensors.  The sensors were positioned so that when the figurine was in the seated position, it would only break the first set of sensors, and when it was in the laying position it would break both sets of sensors.  Clearly, when the figurine is standing up, it doesn't break either of the sensor beams.