Erica the Rhino Comes to Life

Erica is a 6 foot long cyber rhino designed and built by Electronics and Computer Science staff and students here at Southampton University soon to be displayed in the city. […]


Erica is a 6 foot long cyber rhino designed and built by Electronics and Computer Science staff and students here at Southampton University soon to be displayed in the city.

The sculpture has been built as part of Marwell Wildlife’s Go! Rhinos campaign and in celebration of their 40th anniversary, she is part of a collection of inventive sculptures that will be dotted around Southampton this Summer.

The state of the art Rhino comes to life by moving her ears and eyes, making rhino sounds, changing her mood and even tweeting!

Dr Kirk Martinez and students working on Erica’s technology. Image credit: Russell Sachs

Erica is a fibreglass sculpture, by using low power computers and her own Wi-Fi network the public can interact with her through their smart phones. She is being customised with other digital features including LED lights to help her blink and she will be able to read QR codes. The innovative technology will enable the sculpture to read tweets and interact just like web servers in the World Wide Web. The sculpture has been decorated by students from the University’s Winchester School of Art.

Erica’s blue prints

Erica will have both a short and long term memory. The short term memory will enable her to react instantly to an action whereas her long term memory recalls accumulated actions so that her mood and behaviour can change throughout the day.

The view from Erica’s jaw hatch

People can visit Erica in Marlands shopping centre throughout summer, while there they can help to improve her mood by interacting with, and tweeting, her.

The leader of the team behind Erica, Dr Kirk Martinez, said

We are really enjoying bringing together lots of cool technology to make our rhino interactive. The team of volunteers building it are specialists in areas like web technology or electronics and are really excited about the project.

Go! Rhinos Project Manager, Kirstie Mathiesonsaid

We are thrilled to see the transformation of Erica into a truly interactive and unique piece of art and science. The team at ECS have worked so hard and everyone at Marwell Wildlife is so excited to have her as part of the trail.

Go! Rhinos

A mass collection of rhino sculptures will be all over Southampton from July 13th to September 22nd. These innovative sculptures are to demonstrate the artistic talent that Southampton has to offer.

You can also wave goodbye to all the rhinos in one big group get-together at Marwell Zoo from October 11th-14th.

For more information on Erica and the charity visit www.gorhinos.co.uk and http://www.ericatherhino.org/

If you see Erica, or any of the other sculptures, take a picture and tweet us @SotonTab.