Our Robopet has been here for a week already, and it’s about time for us to get down to some serious analysis. So, we carted our brand new toy off to the laboratory, setup the video camera, and put it through its paces.
"A mind of its own..."
The first thing we found was that the Robopet definitely has a mind of its own. Even though we’ve had lots of experience with the original Robosapien, and more recently with the Roboraptor, we found the Robopet was rather difficult to control. It’s too early to judge for certain, and perhaps things will get better as we rack up more hours playing with it.
We wanted to do something simple, or at least what we thought was simple, like having it run through the 8 or so tricks it knows. We tried, and tried, and tried, but to no avail. We were successful in getting it to do some tricks, but for others it seemed to quickly get bored – or it took us way too long to figure out what button to press in what sequence. So while we were looking a the control trying to figure out what to do, it would start to waltz off in a totally different direction.
After about 30 minutes of frustration playing, we decided it was better to set it aside for the moment, regroup, and come back to it with a fresh mind later. Never the less, we put together a one minute sampler of our results so far. Hopefully we’ll have more, and much better, results for you to watch soon.
Related links:
You've learnt about as much as I have, it seems. :-)
I think mine might be arthritic though, as sometimes its front legs just stick out the front when it's trying to walk forwards. Then later it'll walk forward quite happily. Go figure...
Posted by: Carl | November 14, 2005 at 06:39 PM
Just an observation, but why oh why are nearly all the video clips on a slippery surface, ie laminate floor, or table tops!!! surely the robots will move better with a bit a friction?????
Posted by: Mark | November 25, 2005 at 07:14 AM
Mark-
Good observation. The performance of all robots varies quite a bit depending on the surface, of course. Yet people typically expect whatever robot they buy to perform well on whatever surface they happen to have - tile, hardwood, thin carpet, shagg, thick pile, ....
So, when a RR experiences traction problems on a very hard surface, or gets bogged down with heavy pile carpet, they, naturally enough, get frustrated with the robot, not with their apartment or home floor. "It is what it is."
For our videos, we use the hardwood floors and table tops in our house. Oddly enough, we don't have a single carpet or throw rug. It's a design/decorating choice that my wife and I came to because we both like the way it looks and feels to us. It's just a total coincidence that it's a great environment for most of our robots.
Out of all the robots we have, and there are more than I can count on the fingers of both hands, the vast majority of them do really well with our flooring. The RR is the only one that seems to exhibit problems getting traction, and I am considering adding some thin rubber soles to his feet like the RP has.
Posted by: tempusmaster (administrator) | November 25, 2005 at 07:48 AM