e2001 Your Digital Future - Bangkok Post Special Supplement

HIGH-TECH TOYS

Not your mother's Barbie

Tony Waltham

We are on the threshold of a whole new era of smart toys or mini-robots that will rapidly become part of our daily lives. Sony Corp has just come out with an "upgrade" to an enhanced AIBO pet robot dog, a fascinating creature to meet up close. Last year I watched as a shop assistant deftly demonstrated the various attributes of one of the prototype AIBO pets.

She "walked" the animal through various moods and demonstrated its responses and personality traits _ and, indeed, it was clear that an owner would really have to work at grooming and taking care of this pet in order to reap any rewards from its positive responses. Ignore it, and the darn thing sulks!

I was reminded of the AIBO experience when Helen Greiner, the president of iRobot Corporation, showed visitors to Acer's eLife 2000 exhibition earlier this year a doll called "My Real Baby" which will be introduced for the Christmas season this year by Hasbro.

With sensors all over its body and an expressive face, My Real Baby reacts instantly to the attention of a mother, showcases a full range of expressions and sounds, and appears to "grow" over time through speech development and a full menu of unpredictable reactions.

The toy will sell for around US$95, and it would appear poised to raise the bar significantly for girls with wealthy parents. Barbie may never seem the same again. She observed that the good thing about it was that, unlike "the real thing", it did have an "off" switch.

British Telecoms futurologist Ian Pearson predicts that electronic pets will outnumber their organic brethren by the year 2020. Another prediction is that pets will be customised to their owners. They will become intelligent by the year 2005, will contain satellite location information by the year 2015 and there will be a genetically-engineered Furby in the year 2040, some predictions say.