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At least one person who did a Furby Autopsy was not very impressed with the construction of the system.

Some possibly nicer robot kits are available in a number of places, including the Robot Store, Probotics, and Arrick... Of course, there are also the cool Mindstorms, the relatively expensive Aibo (Some hacking info on it can be dug up from the Aibo Site), and the companies listed in this part of the robotics faq

However, Hacking the Furby does give you a relatively inexpensive talking robot with IR input, etc. and ought to be fun... While not the most well constructed system, it does give you some decent features (detects light & sound levels, tilt/inversion of the furby, Infrared and RS232 comms (when upgraded), and some touch sensors on the back, front, and mouth) - especially nice if you get one used, cheap...

It is nice that the reprogrammability kits are being made available, particularly for parents of autistic children (since children can relate to a Furby better than a "regular" hobbyist-grade robot)...

Also, check out the open-source Rossum Project

Well I was unable to find any video of the dang thing. Prob in a few days we'll have something, I didn't however find this link to a really neato 3d presentation of Abio the pet dog. which by the way they just dropped the price of (to about $1,200 bucks, what a steal).

so that's all I have for the karma whoring.. sorry.

-Jon

Or a half witted dog for $1500

...Sony Aibo ripoff! I would love to have a lil pet to put together, with most of the same feature set of the original Aibo's. I would actually just like an Aibo that I can *afford now*, but that seems unlikely given their $1500 price for the dog, $170 for the Energy Station, $100 for the Lithium Ion Battery. This doesn't include the price on software for it or anything else. Check out Sony's pricelist for the Aibo at Aibo's Pricelist on Sony's site. Even if it were only half the price of the Aibo's, it would be a step in the right direction.

(I took the liberty of cleaning up the spelling, and other nits ... :).

I guess that would be amusing, wearing computers with "touch" connectivity, then forming a human chain around an inner circle of cubicles around Christmas, singing, "O! Holy Quake, Nailgun Blight" while the wireless components shake Aibo robots about the office flashing their eyes red and green. (Can they do that? Would these folks have any input on this question?)

If anyone does this, please do make an MPEG2/4 of that and post an URL to it on Slashdot! I'd like to see that! 8^]

Second: I'll buy one when it's capable of being a guard dog, a la Snow Crash. I'd love to see the neighbors get mangled by my nuclear attack dog!

Well, if you look here, you'll see that "AIBO learns from your praise or scolding. Praise it for playing with its ball, and it will enjoy playing with the ball more than ever. But if you scold AIBO when it is only looking at the ball, it will soon ignore the ball altogether."

So I suppose if you scold it when it's around you, it will ignore you, but if you praise it when it's around the neighbours, it will go after the neighbours.

Some computerized weaponry and a little bit of hacking later, you have a psychologically-warped little robot dog that's armed to the teeth.

Here's a snippet of the javascript responsible for the mis-viewing:

var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var isWin = agt.indexOf('win') != -1;
var isMac = agt.indexOf('mac') != -1;

if (isWin) { }
else if (isMac) parent.location="macindex.html";
else parent.location="index_unsupported.html";

For even more entertainment value, check out what you see if you go to macindex.html. ;)

Here's a snippet of the javascript responsible for the mis-viewing:

var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var isWin = agt.indexOf('win') != -1;
var isMac = agt.indexOf('mac') != -1;

if (isWin) { }
else if (isMac) parent.location="macindex.html";
else parent.location="index_unsupported.html";

For even more entertainment value, check out what you see if you go to macindex.html. ;)

Here's a snippet of the javascript responsible for the mis-viewing:

var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var isWin = agt.indexOf('win') != -1;
var isMac = agt.indexOf('mac') != -1;

if (isWin) { }
else if (isMac) parent.location="macindex.html";
else parent.location="index_unsupported.html";

For even more entertainment value, check out what you see if you go to macindex.html. ;)

The 2nd Generation of Sony Entertainment Robots is here.
It looks kind of like a cat, with its small ears and small tale. But I think it is still a Dog.
It recognizes it's Name and a Voice commands (50 words in all).
It can take snapshots via voice commandand and also has a optional wireless LAN card!

I guess I will skip on that new laptop and get a new pet.
http://www.aibo.com/