Simulate petting an unfamiliar cat with this furry bit of technology

File this one under interesting people doing cool stuff.
Brooklyn’s Nicole He unveiled the Unfamiliar Cat Petting Simulator this week. It is just what it sounds like, complete with a joystick and a furry trackpad for attempting to pet the unfamiliar cat.
“Unfamiliar Cat Petting Simulator is a game about the challenges of petting a cat you’ve never met before,” according to He. “You enter a room and meet an unfamiliar cat. You must pet it — but only in the right spots — in order to prove yourself worthy of its fickle companionship.”

He is one of our favorite people working in the tech space in Brooklyn right now. Formerly of Kickstarter, she’s now a graduate student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she’s combining coding and hardware and art. The Unfamiliar Cat Petting Simulator is a midterm project for one of her classes.
Her previous work includes Soylent Dick (trigger warning: Soylent), and the Tinder Love Robot.
Technology doesn’t always have to be groundbreaking, and art doesn’t have to be inaccessible.

Blessed day pic.twitter.com/UJ07UIPjtM

— Nicole He (@nicolehe) April 9, 2016