It is indeed a horrible realisation that one can be blasé about a robot dog. A robot dog! When I was 10 years old, back in, oh, let’s just say sometime in the 1970s, if you’d offered me a robot dog, but in return I had to burn down the family home, I’d have torched the place before you could say Jack Russell. And I was a good kid.
But now we live in an age where such wonders are commonplace. Five years ago we reviewed Sony’s Aibo, a $4,000 robopuppy with all the bells and whistles. We were disappointed. It moved frightfully slowly and its bag of tricks was wanting. Today we have Robopet, a $124 plastic puppy that does most of Aibo’s tricks. The build quality is nothing like Aibo, Robopet is a very fragile thing. A ten year old would have its legs off within a day.
But Robopet does have the regulation range of tricks. In autonomous mode it clatters and whines around the room doing puppy-like things. It’ll roll over and play dead (yes, it can self-right), it shakes itself dry as if it were wet (wetness not recommended!), it barks at things that move (sensors give it limited spatial awareness) and every puppy manerism you can imagine. It will not, as far as we know, hump your leg.
A remote control lets you command puppy to ‘do that funny trick’ for guests, if puppy isn’t co-operating.
The engineering really is impressive. It’s legs articulate through three joints, and its little feet even have robo-Achilles tendons. The software is equally impressive. But it’s the sort of thing you need to remind yourself is impressive, lest you forget.
It is true that as science marches forwards, robot electric motors get louder. Sci-fi films are testament to that. While a robot dog should not be subtle, the clatters and whines of the machinery were grating. Indeed, I had to restrain a colleague who wanted to kick robopuppy. “Do you kick real puppies, huh?” I challenged him. “Never, but I so want to kick this thing”, he shot back. I understood, as I watched robopuppy robo-urinate into thin air.
Robopet would be a fine treat for 10 year olds, or for those within whom the ten year old has never grown old. Just don’t expect it to last quite as long as a steel Tonka truck. Now that was a toy…
www.wowee.com for a RRP of $124.00