ToyBots To Launch Surprisingly Realistic Robot Pet In 2010

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 18 of September , 2009 at 3:03 am

Obviously, they’re making some progress on this whole robot pet thing, and the lifelong battery is great… But it doesn’t seem to do much, and obviously the audio module and the command interface aren’t really working yet. Meh, I think I’ll probably wait for version 2.0.

This is, of course, a joke. Some of what they’re joking about, however, isn’t. ToyBots is working on a hardware and software platform for socially networked robot toys, and they made their first presentation at the TechCrunch50 conference (we had it on Twitter a few days ago). We’ve got a video of that, which describes the system and demonstrates a fuzzy prototype toy called Woozee (an actual prototype, I promise), after the jump.

[ ToyBots ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Comments (7)

Category: Consumer, Humor, Toys

7 Comments

Comment by classy

Made Saturday, 19 of September , 2009 at 2:52 pm

that was f***in stupid

Comment by Joey1058

Made Saturday, 19 of September , 2009 at 3:33 pm

Well, if I understand correctly, these folks want to do a bot that interacts with the net, using the premise of branded toys. It’s an old idea. Can you see kids and adults carrying around teddy bears that yammer about the local Starbuck’s special?

Comment by jimzello

Made Saturday, 19 of September , 2009 at 9:01 pm

Actually it’s a terrific Idea, I’m currently working on making just such a robot ( a secretary/Ipod base/feed reader that can hold and charge my phone and look like a neat work of art while it tells me news and weather). I bought a iRobot Create and plan on making a neat art shell, with that software as a base, I think I could do it well. I wish they would have come to me to create the prototype.

Comment by No

Made Wednesday, 23 of September , 2009 at 2:57 pm

The disappointment I felt when I read that the dog was a joke was only made worse when I saw that they weren’t even making robots all. They’re making a furby that interacts with flash games and downloads audio feeds. Bullshit.

Comment by CAnn

Made Sunday, 27 of September , 2009 at 9:30 pm

lololololol! Brilliant! But still, I hate you guys!!! :-) I’m a real science journalist / documentary film producer and I fast forwarded to the end of the Yorkie video and only watched it a few seconds — and thought the dog was a FAKE — it’s eyes weren’t moving — and I just spent 20 minutes trying to find other footage of this thing. HYSTERICAL! : ) My husband just came in and made me watch more of the video to show me the dog was real. So funny — I know, it’s frightening I get paid to work for PBS when I can’t distinguish a real dog from a robot. PLUS I grew up with Yorkies. Time for early retirement. Loved your last line: “Thanks for bringing the prototype by!” You are too funny — Your new biggest fan, CA

Comment by Jason G

Made Monday, 30 of November , 2009 at 10:50 am

1 million dollars.

an object for the super rich kids of the world to throw around, and hopefully post YouTube videos of this thing on fire, aka Furby 3.0

Comment by Mya

Made Wednesday, 24 of February , 2010 at 8:47 am

Thats really expensive
should cost less
mostbrobably barley anyones gonna buy it
you could buy a couple of houses with 1,000,000

I would buy it if it was 500 or less cause thats a rip off

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

What Is BotJunkie?

From the folks who brought you OhGizmo.com, BotJunkie obsessively chronicles Man's inevitable descent into cybernetic slavery.

One robot at a time.