Competition for AIBO: Robo Cat

bruce76 writes, "A Japanese company called Toshihiro Tashima is slated to introduce a robotic cat similar (in concept) to the Sony Aibo. This robotic cat is called Tama," They put fur on it, but the most interesting part is that they claim it can recognize its own name. That's a improvement over Aibo who isn't deaf, but sound doesn't do too much for him.

Comments

This is no great technical feat.

[Mr. Neutron]

Let's see... robotic cat.... needs to be able to:

-Sit comatose for hours on end
-Meow incessantly for no reason whatsoever
-Mindlessly scratch all furniture it sees to shreads
-Ignore everything that people say to it

The technology to accomplish this has existed for decades.

:-)

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I wrote the API for it

[DonkPunch]

I'm not really supposed to disclose this, but....

There is a software API for this thing. I wrote a large part of it. I basically modeled it on my own cat.

It supports the following calls:

sleep() /* May be called anytime, anywhere */

eat()

go_potty() /* Works best when passed a proper LITTERBOX struct */

shred() /* If no arg, defaults to last FURNITURE struct */

pounce() /* May be called with claws=true/false and teeth=true/false */

sleep_more() /* Added 11/15/99. More realism. */

Pretty much covers it, I think.