Google's stuffed animals would control your appliances (and talk to your kids) - CSMonitor.com

Google's experimental "skunkworks" lab, Google X, has come up with a lot of weird, potentially useful ideas, including Internet-enabled weather balloons and special contact lenses to monitor the composition of users' tears. But a patent filed by Google X and published this week might be the lab's oddest project yet: a line of Internet-connected stuffed animals that can control appliances throughout your house and maintain eye contact with kids. Similar to Amazon's Echo home speaker/information hub, the Google toys would be activated by a spoken word or phrase which, the patent says, would cause the toy to "aim its gaze at the source of the social cue." The toys would be built with motors so they could physically open their eyes and turn their heads toward the person delivering the command. They would also have embedded speakers to let them verbally respond to the user, and the ability to mimic emotions the patent speculates that "to express surprise, [a toy] may make a sudden movement, sit or stand up straight, and/or dilate its pupils."