Toys for young children use sensors to make friends
Robot-toy manufacturers are trying to crack a barrier that has so far prevented most of their electronics-packed products becoming as passionately loved as teddy bears.
Consider the Tribot, a bright red android from the WowWee company which scoots around the floor making wisecrack comments as it avoids obstacles. On release in 2008, the little robot amazed everyone who saw it.
But most customer reviews on shopping websites say the novelty soon palls. For parents, it palls even faster. Listening to Tribot′s raspy voice repeating for the 10th or 20th time that "you really need to vacuum" your floor can be a form of mental torture.
At this week′s Nuremberg Toy Fair, buyers will be looking for robotic toys that make friends instead of becoming annoying.
BMO Capital Markets, a New York financial services company, offered an end-of-year, top-ten-toys list in December that gave pride of place to Zhu Zhu Pets, a new product from a St Louis-based company, Cepia.
US retailers kept running out of stock of the hot product in the days before Christmas, BMO noted.
The Pets are a series of robotic hamsters which respond to stroking and other attention with squeaks of pleasure. Originally released under the name Go Go Pets, they work best with girls aged 4 to 8.
Since coming out in September, the Pets, which come with beds, blankets, tunnels to run through and cars to ride in, have been mainly squeaking their way round US playrooms, but a trading company, TDG, has moved modest numbers to Europe.
Andre Wiesmueller, European director of TDG, said in Hamburg, Germany, "I′ve got seven kids myself." He tried out the Pets on his own family and a 5- and 7-year-old still loved the furry hamsters nine weeks later.
"They still play with them all the time," he said.
Artificial substitutes for live pets appeal to some parents because infant excitement over animals often does not last a pet′s lifetime, and parents end up having to care for rodents.
"My family had live rabbits. The kids were very enthusiastic about them at the beginning, but later it waned," Wiesmueller observed.
Cepia explicitly appeals to other parental concerns, noting in publicity that the battery-powered toys "don′t poop, die, or stink."
Toy professionals say the idea of a toy that simulates friendship and dependence towards its under-8 owner has something in common with the Tamagotchi, a craze invented in Japan in 1996.
A tiny computer, the Tamagotchi contained the image of a chick-bird which had to be given virtual food and nurturing every few hours.
The new generation of robots takes the idea a step further with sensors that respond to obstacles or noises.
The Tribot for example can play watchdog and kick up a ruckus if you try to sneak past it, while the Pets can be switched into nurture mode where they demand attention, then make cooing noises when stroked.
Rainer Buland, an academic at the University of Salzburg music faculty who studies play, said in an interview that a fascination with toys which appear to be alive goes all the way back to the first "automatons" in the 18th century.
"At the end of the day they are an illusion," he said. "Often we do need substitutes to overcome loneliness. But a child does not need them at times when someone else is there to play with them."
Assistant professor Buland dismissed the excitement about robotic "friends" as "hype," while conceding that they are harmless as toys.
But he noted that automatons in their day did disturb society′s attitude toward real animals, impelling some philosophers to claim that animals were nothing more than a superior form of robot.
"That was an illusion too," he said. "We understand today that animals are not robots, but living beings." dpa jbp ms