Rebo: A life-like universal remote control

This paper describes a novel remote control operational with stroking its surface. There are lots of remote controls in our houses for TVs, air conditioners, and so on. However, when we use a remote control, we need to look at both our fingers and the target appliance that we would like to control. It may be not significantly problematic for young people, but elderly people have a difficulty in manipulating remote controls with many buttons. We consider it will be comfortable for various people to use a remote control without looking at their fingers and pushing buttons. Also we consider a remote control should have life-like appearance to become a more familiar artifact to users. In this study, we propose a life-like remote control, Rebo, operational only with stroking its surface and apply to a TV system. The developed remote control has three advantages; familiarity, function awareness, and stroke manipulation in contrast with conventional remote controls with many buttons. These advantages enable users to feel much familiarity by using it, to easily notice its implemented functions, and to use it without looking at the fingers and buttons.