Imagine this: you’re eight years old and your parents are going on a two-week vacation by themselves. Thing is, instead of leaving you with a babysitter, they leave you with a robot. A robot who knows your name, speaks to you in a loving voice, tells you stories, fixes you food, and tucks you in at bedtime. I’m not talking about Johnny #5, but something much more organic–a machine that’s so far from anything we have today that it’s difficult to take the idea seriously. What I’m saying is do it anyway, because the above scenario will happen by the end of our lifetimes. Robotic technology has been moving pretty slowly for a while now, but it appears to be kicking into high gear.
Take Pleo here, the first “life form” (as they call it) to be produced by Ugobe. The company is a team of robotics specialists, animators, technologists, scientists, biologists, and programmers who got together to recreate the appearance and behavior of a week-old Camarasaurus in the form of a $350 toy. Whatever that babysitter-bot of the future looks like, he, she, or it will consider this little guy a close ancestor.
Check out some of these features:
- camera-based vision system (for light detection and navigation)
- two microphones, binaural hearing
- beat detection (allows pleo to dance and listen to music)
- eight touch sensors (head, chin, shoulders, back, feet)
- four foot switches (surface detection)
- fourteen force-feedback sensors, one per joint
- orientation tilt sensor for body position
- infrared mouth sensor for object detection into mouth
- infrared transmit and receive for communication with other Pleos
- Mini-USB port for online downloads
- SD card slot for Pleo add-ons
- infrared detection for external objects
- 32-bit Atmel ARM 7 microprocessor (main processor for Pleo)
- 32-bit NXP ARM 7 sub processor (camera, audio dedicated processor)
- four 8-bit processors (low-level motor control)
Teddy Ruxpin, eat your frickin’ heart out.
