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Paro the Therapeutic Robot Baby Seal
Mike writes "Paro is a therapeutic baby seal robot that is exploring new dimensions in animal therapy. Created to act as a companion for hospital patients and the elderly, the adorable baby harp seal bot aims to increase relaxation and decrease stress. Paro can sense and respond to its immediate environment through five integrated sensors that detect touch, light, sound, temperature, and posture, and it is even capable of learning and responding to a name."
Can he swim underwater like a real seal? .... and if you inflate him with helium, does he fly?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Provide a wooden club alongside these baby seals to help people release their stress.
You could sell them as a package. I've got the perfect slogan: 2 Seals, 1 Club.
They're not kidding when they say these are therapeutic. I just clubbed the shit out of a half-a-dozen of these things, and I haven't felt this good since I got back from the Arctic!
-Peter
Eskimos, bastards keep trying to club the poor thing to death.
You're going to have to paint Paro's fur orange so as to deter poachers. I don't imagine that a patient's stress levels would be very low after seeing their baby seal buddy clubbed into oblivion.
If a Newfoundland fisherman harpoons himself in the foot during next year's seal hunt they can give him one of these in the hospital to cheer him up.
It's a robot right? Maybe they could put missiles on (in?) one and put in on an ice flow then film it shooting back at the fisherdudes. That would be a YouTube classic right there boy I'll tell you what.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
really old news here, this was covered all over the place about a year ago - like here http://www.gadgetking.com/2008/08/21/mental-commitment-robot-seal-love-you-long-time/
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
...does it still die when you bash it on the head with a golf club? And will it make just as nice a pair of slippers?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
It can treat frustration, just use a club on it :)
\u262D = \u5350
Only a year ago? Slashdot is on the up-and-up!
A reminder.
These are skynet's new minions!
first sick children and the elderly, tomorrow the world!
that the robot seal is 50% more therapeutic with genuine baby harp seal fur?
An eskimo takes his snowmobile to a mechanic after eating an ice cream cone.
The mechanic says, "Looks like you blew a robot baby seal."
The eskimo replies, "It was therapeutic."
Elton John, being a fan and thinking it would be a nice bit of PR for Iggy Pop, jumped onto the stage unannounced in a gorilla costume. Not realizing Iggy, as was sometimes the case at the time, was performing on LSD it turned into a show stopper.
I can imagine by the time I'm old in the home, have Alzheimers, and they try to drop some advanced bit of furry robot squirm into my lap, I'll probably react like Iggy on acid. Great, just great.
can he administer medication?
courage mateship sacrifice endurance
Is that when this one makes noises that are annoying as hell and "learns" to wake up at 2am there will actually be irony in your brutal clubbing of it.
A night of clubbing does a body good.
Skynet takes many forms... don't be fooled by it's cuteness.
8==8 Bones 8==8
No, seriously. I have no words.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Ok, So.. it's for human therapy, right? They said animal therapy, but I think they mean using animals to therapize humans, rather than some kind of attempt to make other baby seals feel better.
Just tell security to shoot any canadians that come in the area. Good advice any day.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since it looks like they already have a pacifier in the mouth they must be great for clubbing.
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So when one is in old age, they are pleased by a fluffy tickle me elmo?
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
... is it made out of genuine baby seal fur???
Is it really too much to ask that people keep the sick and elderly company? And if the only thing that wants to spend time with you is a robotic seal, is it even worth it to keep living. . .
"detect touch, light, sound, temperature, and posture, and it is even capable of learning and responding to a name"... wow! that's far more than many software engineers can do.
You want to keep an eye on your baby, so you install a camera in her room.
You want to take care of her, so you put a bag with sensors in her cradle, in the form of an animal.
And, of course, if you don't buy this gadget to your baby, you are such an irresponsable father.
Its going to be placed in the hospital... So the first question that came to mind is, how do we sterilize it periodically?
I worked at a science center for kids for a year and half and we had a Paro for about a year. The thing was incredibly flimsy...
All the touch-sensors are based on a rubbery foam with a metal film covering. This doesnt last very long and doesnt handle liquids very well...
The fur covering cant be completely removed. This is a major issue since you cant really wash the bastard so over time it gets grayer... and grayer... and yellowy... yeah... nasty as heck :-p
There is almost no retention on the power-cord. This means that there is very little chance of the charging-cord actually staying in the thing so you end up with flat batteries..
The thing EATS power.. it is hungry.. after about a year use it lasts about 20 minutes... Oh, and it cant be used while charging. And if you switch from AC to Battery while it is on it turns itself off... stupid methinks?
I had to skin the bastard and do brain surgery to modify the power cord to actually work.
This thing might work, but they should have spent a few dollars making it actually -work- from a technical standpoint.
Meh. They're just trying to get it hyped... and failing.
Saw one of these at the Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Technology) in Tokyo. The hardest part in interacting with it was that it kept getting distracted by schoolkids... maybe my accent was too foreign.
It's older than that, I remember news reports on this thing in 2003 for god's sake (Example, http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/20/comdex.bestof/index.html)! SLASHDOT it is too early to do a "I Love the 00's" program for VH1, please save your reminiscing on 6-year-old news for next year!
Take a nice, cute, cuddly stuffed animal, shove a hard robotic skeleton inside, and have the whole thing croak after 20 minutes when it runs out of power. Yeah, a real improvement.