BAR FLIES: ME alum Kevin Weber and ME graduate student Jeremy Frank) helped create Intro, a device that notifies users of a mutual attraction. Photo by Angela Privin.

Gadget makes meeting people in bars less painful

ME grad students Jeremy Frank and Kevin Weber used what they learned in their High Tech Product Design and Rapid Manufacture class to help themselves and others get dates.

Their invention, Intro, is a gadget that lets people know you are interested inthem without the risk of face-to-face rejection.

The idea was conceived as a group project for Professor Paul Wright’s ME 221 class. The assignment was to use sensors to invent a hand-held device. Group members included Ethan Eismann, Tim Kirk, Matt Sahn, and Dragan Petrovic.

Here’s the scenario. You walk into a bar and exchange your driver’s license for a hand-held Intro, a device with four colored lights, and a four-color identity strip you pin on your clothes. If someone strikes your fancy, you key his or her color code into your Intro and wait. If he or she also keys your color code into their Intro the device vibrates and reveals the colors of the match. “It takes the guesswork out of reading body signals. It only works if the attraction is mutual,” says Frank.

In a culture embracing Internet matchmaking, Intro could be the next dating hit if it weren’t for the current cost and size of the equipment.

Intro needs a laptop bay station to relay its remote signals, so it can only work in a small space with a couple hundred people. Also right now, the device is the size of a 16-ounce water bottle and cumbersome to hold. Shrinking it to the size of a cigarette lighter would require a large capital investment.

While an edgy dot-com might have funded its development a couple of years ago, in today’s economic climate it’s not a serious enough investment, says Weber.

However, Frank and Weber do see a future for their idea.

There is already a Japanese gadget called love-getty that sounds off when approaching an opposite sex love-getty that is programmed in the same mode (either karaoke, chat or meal).

“We could all see the immediate application for technology in our dating lives,” says Frank.

College of Engineering Home Page

Send comments to editnews@coe.berkeley.edu   © 2002 UC Regents