Comet is a movable phone booth that allows you to have private calls while being completely immersed in the public space. The project was built using Arduino circuits hacked on an old hair dryer helmet and an office chair with wheels. This was a collaborative project with Pedro Andrade, Laura Boffi, and Sebastian Thielke in a Physical Computing module lead by Massimo Banzi at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Pictured in Wired Italia No 14 Anno 2, April 2010, p155. Exhibited at Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan, Italy 2010.
To start the phone call module the user sits on the chair and positions his head inside the hair dryer helmet. Immediately the waiting song stops, a red light turns on from the bottom showing that it is being used and the phone will guide the user to type the number on the keypad and start the call.
The helmet streams the voice of the person you are calling. There’s a microphone to capture your voice, and after finishing the call the user gets out of the chair and the phone booth goes back to waiting mode.