For this week's blog i decided to read an article on robotic toys. This article included a study on a robotic toy called Pleo. The amount of input and output between the user and the toy are actually pretty remarkable. In order to be able to take input from the user, Pleo has a large number of sensors. These sensors include eight capacitive touch sensors, two infrared sensors, a small CMOS camera, and four optically interruptible push buttons. This allows there to be different modes of input for Pleo. Pleo can respond to vocal input as well as physical interaction because of all the sensors it has.
Once the Pleo has received input it can decide what it wants to output using the software ran on two ARM7 32-bit processors. Internally, Pleo has 14 motors with customized gears which allow for basic movement such as tail wagging, slow walking, head/mouth movement, and other actions. Pleo also has two speakers that allow for sound output. The output is designed to mimic an actual pet as close as possible. Obviously the toy cannot come close to a real pet but it does provide some intelligent output when given input. The output is also very complex so the user wont get bored of the toy.
Link to my article:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1810543.1810549&coll=porll&dl=ACM&type=series&idx=SERIES11165&part=series&WantType=Proceedings&title=IDC&CFID=103343842&CFTOKEN=80578998
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