Subject:
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Re: Design
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Sun, 4 Dec 2005 17:07:23 GMT
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Original-From:
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PeterBalch <peterbalch@compuserve.NOMORESPAMcom>
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Viewed:
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1471 times
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Message text written by Mr S
> There are several 'things' working against
> commercially available autonomous robot [toys]:
> 1 - Little girls kind of like the dolls that eat and
> cry and such,
> 2 - When boys play, they are in total control of the
> play, and have little need of the 'toys' doing things
> on their own.
So, aim at the boy's market? There won't be a girl's market until robots
are able to interact socially - which is a very long long way off.
(Toy robots are not yet even at the stage of Pac Man. Painting Pac Man pink
and calling it Ms Pac Man didn't make it into a girl's game. Girl's games
didn't take off until computers hardware was good enough that the game
characters could have social interactions more complex than Bang Bang
You're Dead.)
> people ...
> like to anthropomorphize
> things
> The reason that autonomous robots have no truck in the
> commercial world yet is that they are not easily
> anthropomorphized the way that Roomba and Aibo are.
Why is it easier to anthropomorphise things that are remote controlled?
Cats are cute because they have their own agenda. The Sims are cute for the
same reason.
Aibo is autonomous. Maybe it's cute - I don't know. When I've watched
children and adults interact with Aibos, they're fascinated for the first
five minutes. They try to explore it's full range of activities. But they
soon get bored. It's the same for Robosapiens. How many hours of play-value
is there in them?
> The Robosapiens allows young boys to anthropomorphize,
> in a way that they like to play... burps, farts, and
> controlling the movements.
> If you were to make a pet cat that needed no real
> interactions, it would be possible to sell them, but
> that requires a good bit of autonomous robotics.
So which side are you promoting? Boys like controlling the movements or a
fully autonomous cat would sell?
Tamagochis sell because they're a combination of autonomous and dependent.
They require nurturing and promote social interaction between their owners
(by being mated). But there's no way to program them. Would a boy's
tamagochi robot that you could program and battle against your friend's
tamagochi work? The best programmer wins? If that worked for a virtual
tamagochi would it work for a hardware robot? Then why not just use
Mindstorms? But Mindstorms requires much more time, intellectual effort and
money that most people want to invest.
Peter
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