The robot invasion has begun and they might just be sitting on your lap, purring and licking their furry paws.
American toy company Hasbro has a device that it calls the Joy For All Companion Pet, which is a fancy way of saying that they've taken all of the pleasures of having an animal to pet, minus the claws and hissing, and put four C-cell batteries into it, all for $100 (US).
And if you ask St. Albert's Bud Norris, they are the future in a box.
“I absolutely believe that by the time [my granddaughter] gets through school, she is going to have an actual robot as an instructor,” he averred, sitting in his immaculate and finely appointed home with many antiques and even a grandfather clock as major points of interest in his living room.
“I retired two years ago and my goal was to make sure that our grandchildren view robots positively because a lot of things that they see in the media, especially movies and games, robots are shown as being violent … the enemy. That's the reason for the cat.”
Kitty-Kate, as he named it, has sensors that respond to touch and movement, and has its own “realistic” feline sounds and actions, including nudging you when you haven't petted it for a while. His granddaughter loves it just as much as he does, he says, just as she would with a real cat, and has quite an attachment to it too.
“Your mom does too,” Vicky Kennedy said. “She walks by and the cat meows, and she says, ‘Oh, be quiet!' as if it was real.”
One might suspect that these consumer electronics would have a higher level of appeal for a somewhat younger audience. Norris, 68, disagrees. A companion robot cat is a perfect tool to help seniors deal with loneliness and isolation, two common and serious problems with the elderly population. Considering the continued upswing in the numbers of that age demographic, this problem is only going to compound itself as time goes on.
“It's a human-interaction kind of robot. Three years ago, there were only three robots that I felt met my criteria as far as being able to interact on a social level. Now, there are probably 30.”
Companionship aside, Kitty-Kate really doesn't do much. You can make up your own comparisons or contrasts to a real cat as you see fit on that one. There's also a dog robot that does jumps and has a few other tricks.
And then there's Becky. Becky is his Budgee (pronounced like a budgie bird), a somewhat pricier robotic device but one that ranks way higher on the practicality scale. It essentially is a wheeled carrier that follows you around carrying up to 50 pounds of your stuff for you.
Norris loves to use it for his groceries but others have suggested how many different purposes it could fulfill.
“One lady is in a six-storey apartment building and the laundry is in the basement. There's an elevator. She said, ‘it takes me three trips to get my laundry downstairs. [Budgee] is amazing!'”
An American company, 5Elements Robotics, sells these for $1,400 (US). It also has other similar robots that are still in the prototype stage. There's also a Nanny Budgee that keeps an eye on your kids while you can be elsewhere, checking in on them with a video feed accessed through your tablet or mobile phone.
Norris has gotten his fair share of strange looks as he walks through his local grocery store, Becky following him all the way. But people aren't as averse to it as one might think. One woman who he guessed was in her mid-80s was surprisingly nonchalant about it.
“As casual as can be, she says, ‘I see that you've got a robot. Where are you going to get your exercise?' I said, ‘I still have to walk with it. I just don't have to carry groceries.'”
As contrast, he noted that a 20-something front desk clerk at a Calgary hotel “was just blown away!”
“The interesting thing about robotics is that the public believes – when they see one – that it's a multi-tasking device. Most commercially available robots right now are one-trick ponies. You can use your imagination as to what Becky can carry, but at the end of the day, that's what she does. She doesn't open doors. She can go over from lino to carpet but she can't go over the doorstep.”
Of course, Bud and Vicky also have a Roomba self-propelled vacuum in the house too. They are very thankful for that timesaver, even if Bud did have to perform surgery on it once to replace its built-in battery. That's not the sort of activity he relishes but it's part and parcel with the techno-gadgets he now plugs in next to his grandfather clock.
He concluded by noting his interest in the pure practical applications of these devices that are slowing taking over his home. He's not a geek who is into robots to fulfill some kind of pop culture fantasy of his.
“I'm not interested in technology,” he notes. “I don't care about the sensors or the gigabytes or anything like that. I'm not a techie. I was 62 before I even learned how to use a computer!”
