Robo Pets

Um do you either of you have pets. I've got a dog as well. I love pets, but my wife and I don't currently have one. Are my My parents have pets and I love to go visit them. And I think we're we keep we have dog envy, so we constantly think about like, should we get a dog? Should we get a dog? It's probably gonna happen soon, gotcha. So but yeah, I mean, you know, having a pet, it's one of those things that I'm sure a lot

of people on some level take for granted. I mean, there are always those moments that you have with your pet where you're just like I never want this moment to ever end because it's awesome. I you know, whether it's a dog or a cat or you know, a Boa constrictor. People have different types of pets, and they

all have them for for different reasons. But we wanted to talk a little bit about the process of perhaps moving from actual living animal pets to robotic pets, and also talk a little bit about why, you know, some of the effects we get when we happen to have a pet and bond with that pet. Yeah. I wanted to start by emphasizing the fact that when we're talking about replacing animals with robots, I don't think that's uh,

just a nothing question. I mean, the love we have for animals is totally real, like you know, in a sort of biologically verifiable way, it's real. Uh. One of the things that I read about was how, uh this chemical called oxytocin. It's a neuroactive chemical in the body, and it is very significant in like say, bonding and intimacy. So you get it with with touching people that you feel closely about when it's present in mothers and infants,

steering bonding. But apparently also oxytocin has been linked to bonding between humans and their pets, and oxytocin has got a lot of actual, pretty powerful effects on people, right. I mean it's when we say bonding that seems pretty uh you know, conceptual, like you're not you know what does that actually mean? But oxytocin can actually have uh, you know, a measurable effect on the body. Yeah, Well, like lots of these chemicals that happen in the brain

and the nervous system. We we don't know all of the effects, but we we have it linked to a bunch of effects like lowering anxiety, helping us feel happy and trusting um, and also just putting the body into a state of readiness to heal, which sounds a little bit woo woo, I understand, but but that's scientific woo woo. Yeah. Right, so as opposed to oxytocin, it makes you more likely to be able to bend spoons with your mind, which

is just total woo woo. But yeah, I mean, it's it's clear that this is this is actually biologically powerful stuff. I mean, they're there beyond all the cat videos that are out there on YouTube, which is just I mean, that's proof alone that we have a fascination for animals. It has an actual biological effect. Yeah, and we know this from experience too. I mean, there's no logical reason that you should like risk your life to save an animal,

but people do this. Oh. Of course, animals have been used for therapeutic purposes too, since way before science ever started looking into all this chemistry stuff, since like the mid eighteen hundreds of Florence Nightingale used animals with her patients.

Back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, they started doing research to start verifying some of this stuff, and that was when we got those studies that like found that heart attack survivors who had pets lived longer than those who did and and that petting an animal can lower your blood pressure. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there are some benefits of having pets. Not everyone can have at

least what we consider a traditional pet, though, right. I mean, I know, I know people who have allergies that are so severe that they can't be anywhere near an animal for more than a couple of minutes before they start having symptoms of their allergies. They start having eyes or watering, they start being having difficulty breathing sometimes, you know, especially if it's an allergy to like a dog or a cat. They might even develop, you know, physical rashes. So it's

as sure. It's estimated that about that almost ten percent of the population could be allergic to cats and dogs, and it can get really serious, really fast if you, for example, have a pre existing condition like asthma, which can set off those symptoms a lot worse and trigger an attack. And they're not always you know, we love our animals, and most of us feel like they're totally worth the cost that's involved in keeping an animal, but

that cost can be pretty high. They can financially cost Yeah. Yeah, our compatriots over at pet finder dot com estimate that the cost of owning a cat per year can be anywhere from three hundred to dollars, and and that a dog ownership for a year can cost anywhere between five hundred and a thousand. I'm sorry, I totally incorrect one right. I was about to say, like, I had a dog named thisby who I sadly lost just last year, and uh,

the last couple of years of her life. They were very expensive because she was generally pretty healthy, but she had a couple of acute health problems. That required quite a bit of money to help resolve. And you know, once we were sure that she was in a good place again and everything was fine. But eventually, of course her health declined to a point where we had to say goodbye to her and that was very very hard emotionally on me. Um. But yeah, obviously it was also

was also very expensive. So there are lots of wonderful benefits to owning a pet, but having a real animal pet also comes with these other sides. You know, these other considerations you have to take into account. Otherwise you're being really naive if you don't don't think that there could be another side to it, right, Yeah, so that brings up the question, Well, people are talking about artificial intelligence robots. I mean, people have thought about making fake

humans for a long time. I've known a few why not make artificial animals? Well, especially when we've already touched on something else that we humans already do, which is that we develop an emotional attachment to things that are not actually alive. I mean, when we have our discussion about people who have named their room bas uh. And granted in this case, you probably wouldn't necessarily have the same sort of emotional attachment to a roomba as you

would to a dog or a cat, depending upon the person. Obviously, people really hate dogs and cats, and some people really love rumbas. I mean, you know, people name their room Baz. Yeah, you know so. But the fact that we already know that there are people who develop emotional attachments to things that are not actually organically alive suggest that perhaps a robotic pet is a perfectly cromulent outcome, right, Yeah, And in fact, it's not something that's never been tried before.

There's actually quite a few. In fact, I didn't think to put it in our notes, and it may even be in our notes further down, and I missed it. But I was also thinking that beyond the actual robots that we're going to talk about, there's also the digital pets that Tama and stuff like that. Yeah, those got really popular, and I think it was like around the nineties when they started getting really popular, and some elements of that have crept into video games, computer games, that

sort of stuff. And while those aren't necessarily physical representations of pets like the other ones were going to talk about, and not not moving walking representations of pets anyway, Yeah, it's it's still something that people could have kind of an emotional attachment to. So if you want to hear a lot more about digital pets, Jonathan and I did an episode of Tech Stuff all about them at some point last year. Yeah, it would have been early last year,

so somewhere early in two thousand and thirty. And see if we can remember to link that on social Yeah. So let's talk about some of the actual robots that various companies have come out with that are, you know, either supposed to completely mimic an animal or at least be representational of an animal. Okay, so in the late nineties through the two thousands, there were a bunch of these, um, and I'd say probably the biggest one, the one you're most likely to have heard of, is the Sony a Bow. Yeah.

I remember seeing these. So this was a little like robotic puppy dog type thing, and um there were there were different versions of it that each looked different, So I had like differently shaped heads sort of and and different designs coming out over time because it existed in many incarnations over the years. Sure, but but if you if you think about I mean, if you think about

the phrase robot dog. This is about what you would expect phrase, unless, of course, you grew up watching Doctor Who, in which case K nine might be the and all be all of robot dogs. This one was slightly more streamlined. It was the iMac of of the canine and it had legs. Yeah. Yeah, well so it debuted in nine and it was really impressive in a lot of ways, I've got to say, especially for back being back in and what it developed over the early two thousand's. So

it could walk around in a fairly stable way. It could see and hear um, and with hearing it could respond to the owner's verbal commands. Sure um. It could also take pictures. There was actually a uh, there's a there's a funny sce net article we found where they mentioned that there were fan communities of these pictures taken

by the Sony dogs. But all the pictures happened to be of people's feet or table legs, table legs, and people's ankle because because because the eye, it's not a very or a bow, it's not a very large device. It's actually, you know, it's a tiny little puppy dog size things. So any picture taking from its perspective is about what you'd expect, you know, around around that eye

level for a puppy dog. Of course, that kind of makes me wonder if there's an actual animal that size when it thinks about like the image of its owner, does it think about the face or does it think about what's usually at eye level for it? Well, I would imagine that depends on whether or not you allow the animal to get up on the furniture. In my case, my dog definitely knows my face because he and I are level pretty much all the time. Yeah, and so the abo or ibo however we pronounced it, it's a

I b O, but it's uh. They made what like a hundred fifty thousand of these things. Yeah, it was importation from to two thousand six when they closed it off. And in retrospect, I think a lot of people have kind of looked at it as a tech failure, not because it was necessarily a bad product, but because it

was too expensive, prohibitively expensive. It was. There were different prices for the models throughout the years, but it ranged from about a thousand dollars to two thousand dollars, right, and and to have someone like the the issue here is to market a robotic companion that comes across like a pet where you might be willing to spend a good deal of money, keeping in mind that, yes, this is an upfront cost for this particular kind of pet, as opposed to a biological pet, where the costs go

throughout the animal's lifetime. This one, it's all up front. But it's hard to get people to think of it as a pet as opposed to a toy, And to convince people to spend a thousand to two thousand dollars on a toy is a lot harder than to say, no, this is a pet. Yeah. Another thing about a bow uh, is that despite his cool ability to walk around and and and respond to commands and have some degree of intelligence,

that that's all kind of cute and fun. This is obviously a robot, Like, you're not trying to hide the fact that it's a robot. It's got a smooth plastic outer exterior. Uh. You can hear it moving around, you know. Eventually it would start saying kill all humans, you know, the way all robots do. Eventually. They weren't training. They clearly they weren't trying to pass for life like this was its own kind of thing. This is a robot very kitchily specifically, I mean, like the product design very

much reminds me of of robotic illustrations from the nineteen fifties. Yeah, it's got a very Jetson's kind of look to it, definitely. So, but we have another one here that we were going to talk about, an actual therapeutic robotic animal. And here's the thing. I've pet one of these really Yeah at C Yes, I take it. I believe it was the yes, yes, uh pero p a r oh, Yeah, this was that's

that one that looks like a harp seal. Yeah, it's a cute little harp seal and it makes a little cooing noises and you can pet it and it moves, and yeah, there was a there was a booth that had one. It was either at C E S or it was at E three I remember, I remember was one of the two. E three would have been the

more unusual place to see it. But um, yeah, it's and this is a robotic harp seal essentially that's designed to be kind of a cuddly um sort of animal substitute for people who need a sort of a therapy animal something to have that sort of therapeutic effect that we were talking about earlier. Yeah, so this is a very different kind of approach than than Abo. So whereas Abo is a fun toy that will walk around the room and do cute things, Pero is a sort of

lap toy. It doesn't move around. It does move siggles, but it doesn't it doesn't look amoute. Yeah. The moving is designed to respond to petting and to show facial animation to give it personality. It's covered in fur, and I think that's one thing that they're going for here. Is this more lifelike kind of approach to the animal feeling tactile at any rate. Yeah, it's covered in soft for actually soft antibacterial, for which point it responds to

different kind of touching it. It moves its eyes, it blinks in a really adorable way. Uh, and it lets you know when it needs something like power slash food, which is I guess the same thing for it. Yeah. Yeah, it's charged by a little pacifier that goes in the mouth, which is creepy. Yeah, this is kind of cute, kind of creepy at the same time. And it's the crying

if you ignore it that really starts to get creepy. Yeah, and so it's one of the things is that it's baby sized, like this sort of goes right in your arms, and it's believed to sort of reduce anxiety and encourage engagement, especially from people suffering from dementia and right, Yeah, this was the the display I saw. They were specifically talking about using it in places like elder care facilities and uh and you know that sort of therapy, and it

was undeniably cute. It's a very cute kind of thing. And I remember when I saw it, I was really impressed with uh, just as you know, the fact that it's functions were pretty basic. It did them really well. Yeah, they've also definitely used them. And what it's it was developed in Japan by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and so it's also been used a bunch over there during the tsunami relief, earthquake relief stuff

like that. Yeah. So where does the cost come in on this one, though, because that's a big question. It's pretty expensive. We're talking we're talking probably around five thousand or six thousand dollars. I've seen years ago it was cited as six thousand The most recent figure I've seen

as five thousand dollars. So this isn't a household item. No, and it wasn't intended to be really no, no, no, no, they're not really selling this to get I think it's mostly for or care facilities, Like the facility has one and it uses it sort of as an in house therapy animal. Well, however, the next one we have on our list is actually a one that was marketed to consumers, right, this was a consumer pet robot. Yeah. This next one. Uh Yet again, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it,

would you say? P l e O? Uh? So? Pleo is a robotic dinosaur modeled after the genus Camarasaurus, which was a four footed sauropod. It's not a camaro Saurus, which is a boss kind of car, just making sure fairly boss moderately boss moderately boss, Okay. So, whereas something like a bow is obviously a robot with like the smooth artificial exterior and the robotic movements and and that's sort of like part of the charm of a bow, Pleo is designed to have more lifelike movements, like it's

really trying to convey vince you. I think that this is a real living creature, and it's it's got a soft skin like a like a plastic sized, I think silicone based kind of thing that that was that was painted. Yeah, so it's made to look like in a patasaurus or as you were saying that the Kamarasaurus um. It's actually uh able to have lots of little facial expressions and uh and and again it seems to have a personality

on its own. Yeah. That's one thing they sell this with is the idea that it has emotional intelligence, that this animal has a personality and and real emotions, and that it looks like it's about to read lines from the land before time. It really does. Yeah, you're right. I didn't even think about that. But yeah, so it responds to petting and touching, and it makes vocalizations and changes its body movements and facial expressions with response to

how you manipulate it with your hands. Uh. And it's got a pretty robust sensory apparatus, yes, it does to tell what's going on. Now. The reason why I'm giggling is because here at how stuff works, which is where we are right now, is that how stuff works dot com. Our site director Tracy Wilson wrote an article about Pleo and was actually going to take one apart because we

used to do that at How Stuff Works. We would we would do these full galleries where we would get gadgets and we would break them down and show all the parts that were inside them. It just kept screaming, no, I'm making that part up. But as I recall, I think we ultimately decided not to do that with Pleo because I believe they asked us very nicely, uh to

you know, not do that. There is a photograph from the company you go you ugo B I have no idea how to say that either creators of the original Pleo right right and there there's a photograph attached to the that How Stuff Works article of its inner skeleton, and I had and it kind of upset me. I like, scrolling through the article, I was surprisingly emotion only upset. And again that's a great example of how something that we know, I mean, you rationally know this thing is

not actually live, it's not organic in any way. It didn't trick me, but you can still I mean, if I were to watch somebody uh cause damage to one of these especially when it was on. I would definitely have an emotional response to it. I would feel badly for this thing that could not itself feel Yeah. So if you're skeptical about the ability to bond with a robotic pet, that's very convincing. Think about this. Would you feel okay kicking it like just any rock or something

like that. If you wouldn't, and I think if you're a person of normal emotional character you wouldn't feel okay about just kicking it, then you might also have some potential to bond with something like this. Yeah. But so a little more about Clio. So it was originally put out by Yugobi. I think that's how you pronounce it, which I shared a co creator with the old Furbie

dolls Um Caleb Chung. Yes. Yeah. So the original model of Pleo went goodbye in two thousand nine, but then the model was resurrected later as Pleo r B Pleo reborn Um And so that was priced at four hundred and sixty nine dollars in two thousand and eleven. That is still officially the list price from what I can tell, but I've found them as cheap as three D fifty five on Amazon, so uh much less expensive than the old Sony a Bow or EBow dogs and much much

less expensive. So we're starting to see it in a range where at least some people would have it more

within their their buying power. But again, I think a lot of people still view these as as toys primarily, not as something that they would uh, not as something that they could develop an emotional attachment to that would seem quote unquote normal, right, Not like there's anything necessarily abnormal about it, because as we've established, all of us can develop emotional attachments to things that are not organically alive. But there's kind of a social and cultural concept that

such an emotional attachment is a little odd. Maybe it's changing slowly, but I know that if I were to have bought a pleo as a kid and treated it like a pet, even if that made me happy, I'm sure that most of my friends would have viewed me as even more strange than they already did just saying something, and possibly that your parents would have gone like, huh No, I think my parents would have been totally on board.

In fact, I feel fairly confident about that. So moving on, though, there was another robotic dog, Right, I just wanted to cite one more example, because actually there have been a bunch. Sure, yeah, there's been. Yeah, there's actually quite a few examples. I mean I remember going through toy stores and seeing various models of different types of robotic pets the head different

levels of sophistications. Some of them were no more than like an r C controlled essentially like an RC controlled vehicle, but in an animal kind of form factor. Others had these more advanced features where they were able to respond to things like vocal commands or being able to sense when something was touching it. Yeah, So we just focused on some of the ones that I thought were the

most interesting, but there are a bunch of others. And one of the examples I wanted to give of one that's still being made because like a bow was discontinued, right of course, um one today is Zoomer. So that's a little robotic puppy. Uh yeah, so that's an actually affordable I mean, I would argue that if you're going to drop cash on a robot pet, that is a reachable price point for the kind of person who. Yeah. On the other hand, I did read a review of

it from Mash double, so it doesn't walk. It has rollers for feet, and so that's which does considerably sort of undercutting the life like aspect of it definitely, but it also means that it can keep up with you a little bit better. I mean, and anything that has that four legged uh look look, motion is going to be significantly slow at this current stage in Rebot unless you are so we'll talk about that in a little

Good Boy. I can't wait. Okay. The other thing the review I read noted I don't know if I said it was from Mashable, but they noted that it's not very responsive to the verbal commands during its training mode, and that so it's just like a dog. You have to press a button to make it listen to you, like on its head. You have to pat its head and then it will listen. Okay, it seems incredibly similar to my own experience. But all right, I take it.

I see what you're saying. Then again, one thing I do want to note versus a top price of around two thousand for a but that's five of the price. Yeah,

so you're kind of what you pay for. But but also I don't know, like like that that review from mesh Bowl was talking about how this is, although clearly not a dog is perhaps a decent replacement as such, for for for a kid who's either allergic or maybe whose parents can't afford to keep up with a dog, or maybe they live and say an apartment where there's a no pets policy, or or wanting to to test out and see if a child who's been begging them for a dog is actually going to pay any attention

to it at all whatsoever? Right, Okay, so I want to talk about some of the things that we would have to accomplish in order to make a really really amazing robot pet. Okay, so where we've come so far is impressive, but we're not there yet. We don't have these robots that are that are really convincingly like real animals. Right.

We were just talking about locomotion. Let's let's go into that. Okay, sure, Yeah, So a lot of the ones we've discussed so far either would be kind of wobbly, you know, if they're actually walking on four legs, they don't they don't tend to have very smooth, fluid, organic kind of movement, or they're moving around on wheels, So I mean that's very different from what you would see in the animal world.

Maybe you'd have to get a really long haired artificial dog that where you wouldn't be able to see the legs anyway, and so it could just wheel along and you wouldn't notice, so like canine, but with fur instead of so wait, so you're you're suggesting that a device with wheels also has long hair, and you don't see any potential, then you are clearly the engineer in the room. Robotic dog with mange and sparks flying out and smoke

coming up. That's all I see from this. Okay, okay, So no, imagine that you want a robotic dog, but you want like like a big dog that you can run around with and wrestle with the play frisbee in the park. You know that when big dog? Are you thinking Buston Dynamics big Dog, Well, yes that I am think that among other robots from Boston Dynamics, And Boston Dynamics is their robotics company that they partner with DARPA, and they've been designing a lot of really cool and

weird and cute and strange looking things for the military set. Yeah. Yeah, they fall deeply into that uncanny valley kind of territory for me because because their movements are so realistic. Yeah, they are, they are mimicking biological movements. Okay, so yeah, a lot of these things were like say, they were created to carry packs in the field or something like this. But what we're talking about are quadrpeedal robots. They're they're four legged robots that run over terrain. They can run

around wherever. We can talk about a few of them. One of them is the Big Dog. The Big Dog is a big, four legged, quadrupedal robot that It's pretty cool because you can see it getting there in terms of balance, stability, the sort of robust motion that a live animal has because of their motor cortex. Now, is that the one where there's the video of the guy pushing the robot with his foot? Yes, this is a four legged, uh, four legged robot and this guy kicks it.

He just kicks it, and it like stumbles, but it doesn't fall over. So the question I have for you guys is did you feel bad for the robot? I did, And then I think in the same video it immediately proceeds because they're on an icy surface and the robots starts slipping on the ice, and I had the same emotional gut reaction that I do when my dog slips on the ice, and I'm like, that's so cute and I need to help you. Yeah. Yeah, And I really did feel that too. I saw it slipping on the ice.

First it was hilarious, and then I felt so much pity. Right, and then it's interesting again because once again, on a rational level, we know that this is a machine, but on an emotional level, we do have this connection. And I mean I was mad at the guy for kicking the robot. It was really a demonstration to show how if it was suddenly thrown off balance, how I could catch itself and remain up right. I mean, it was a It was a practical demonstration of the robots capabilities.

But at the same time, I'm like, you're a mean man, Mr Kicker. Yeah. I felt the same way. Some other Boston Dynamics robots you should check out. Go to YouTube. Look up videos of Big Dog. Look up Cheetah. That's a much smaller one that can run really fast. According to their YouTube video description, it it achieved a speed of twenty eight point three miles per hour, which is

quote a bit faster than Usain Boltt. Yeah. Um, that also would be very unsettling to see a robot moving that quickly, especially you and and particularly since for most of us are experience with robots tends to be this lower end consumer level, right, So what we're used to is things that kind of wiggle a little bit as

they're trying to walk forward. They are they always look like they're right on the verge to tipping over something very nearly stationary, right, So when you see something like this they can move at twenty emails probably like that is just not right. Beyond the big dog, there's another one, the wild cat. Yeah, I saw this one too. That one was really interesting because it could move very quickly and it had two different basic styles of running. It had kind of a galloping run and it had a

bounding run. So the galloping one will look more like what you would see like the way a horse would would be at a full gallop, and the bounding one reminded me of a dog like in full run, chasing after like a frisbee or something. Yeah, So with advances like these, I can really see how it could be possible to create a big, fun robotic dog to run around with you in the park, to go on hikes and nature trails with you, to wrestle, or you know, do whatever kind of athletic thing you want to do

with the dog. But there are some big drawbacks you'll immediately recognize if you watch these videos. Number one, these things are large and bulky and loud. Number two, I was gonna say they sound like mechanized death running toward you. Take all take all the sound, all the sound work used in UH in the Michael Bay Transformers movies, and apply that to your pet. Uh Number three, they're not very cuddly. And that's what I want to move into.

The next thing is that I think we would have to work on to get really good robotic pets, would be designing them for texture actually and for cuddliness. Well, and this is this is like for this is something that Pero already probably does pretty well. Yeah, this is something that's incredibly challenging because if you want both of these things, then you're really limiting yourself to what kind of materials and what kind of power you can use,

because all of that's going to add weight to your pet. Right, So, so if you think about something like the big dog robot. I mean, obviously that would be way too bulky, way too large, and way too robotic to pass as any sort of pet that's supposed to mimic a biological creature

convincing lye um. But if you think about that, then that would essentially be your skeleton and musculature for whatever animal you end up with, and then you would have to pad that out with other material to make it more cuddly and soft, so it's not just you know, a hard edged robot that has fur on top of it. Yeah. One of the advances that I think is coming sometime

in the future is going to be soft robotics. And we talked a little bit about this Joe and I and our episode about robot childcare, but um, which actually will be airing after this is okay, so look forward to that in the future. Then, basically, robot research up until now has really been focused on using hard materials because there's so much more predictable from a mathematical standpoint

and and more durable and therefore easier to implement. And so we don't even have software to to help researchers account for how soft materials are going to behave, right, I want to introduce a couple other concerns when it comes to this texture thing. One of them is warmth.

I don't know if you all have considered this, but it might be kind of disconcerting if you're to hold or pet your room and it's not warm, yeah, or it's or it's just very warm wherever the battery exactly, Yeah, if it's not distributed in a way that feels organic. I think the the uniformity of human body or animal body warmth is one of the key things that you used to detect life by touch. Sure, I feel like that could be a relatively easy thing to solve compared

to some of these other problems. But but absolutely that's something I think you would have to come up with a plan where the heat generated by whatever the power source was was distributed across this because you clearly wouldn't want to add heating elements to a robot, because electronics and heat don't go so well together. No, but I could certainly imagine, say, if you've got a heat sink within the machine, you might have capillary actions distributing it.

Might be a clever dual purpose us like like figure out figuring out how to distribute that any of our listeners are are taking notes and they're about to make a robotic animal based upon our suggestions, you can just include us in that pattern, just just throwing it out there. Another thing about the touch and the texture of the animal would be something that came up with the Pleio.

So one of the problems with the original Pleio was that its skin would flake away after after lots of petting over time, prolonged touch and interaction with this animal would cause the paint to flake off. And this is a real problem. I mean, real animals, when you're petting them, you're like removing detached pieces of fur and dead skin cells, stuff that comes away naturally, and in fact, they can be pleasurable for the animal to for you to move

that aways. Sure, yeah, with a non alive organism, it's not regenerating its own exterior just can be well. I mean, one solution to that is to create some sort of robotic pet where the uh, the skin is actually replaceable as opposed to you know, like like you do that on you know. I can just imagine you go and you have to go buy a new skin for your robot pet, and then you can remove the old one

and put in a new one. Now, granted, that does take away, obviously from the realism, but I don't think any of us want the experience of actually having to scalp our robot pet animal and then replace it with a new skin and suture it on. Yeah, I'm not going to sign up for that one. Although, I mean, there are certainly some maybe not not animals shaped creations,

but some some dolls and toys there. There's some Asian fashion dolls that there's there's some Korean lines of Japanese lines, and I'm forgetting the name of the things exactly, but but they stand a foot or too tall and uh, and the people who purchase them will purchase different eyes for them in wigs and will retool the strings in the alls so that they can and and all of this creeps me out a little bit, but it's considered perfectly normal within the community to be like, oh, I'm

just touching up my doll, and so I took all of his joints apart, and I'm tightening his strings today that kind of stuff. Yeah, there could of course just be improved durability. I mean, that's one thing that they did with the ple o r b asps to the PLEO. One of the main upgrades they talked about was that uh its skin was more durable and it was less likely to flake off. And as we work on materials science related things like that, I do think that that

kind of stuff is absolutely forthcoming. Okay, but looking at the Boston dynamics things that we mentioned a minute ago, sound this is obviously a big thing because when you haven't an object this big running at you, it's going to be making a lot of noises. But even if we say, okay, I don't want a huge, gigantic dog that I can wrestle with. I just want a cute little puppy, Well, even a bow makes noise absolutely, and

you get these these mechanical noises. You know that that the gears in the movement, right, it's certainly not organic in any way. I mean that's ultimately that might not be an issue in the long run, but at least initially I could see that being something that turns people away because it doesn't seem you know, natural or real or however whatever word you want to use to describe it when you compare it against an actual organic pet.

Although I think that a lot of those kind of a lot of the sound problems are going to become resolved when we also resolve some of the power and engine related issues. Yeah yeah, so let's go straight to that power and charging. Now, obviously I think you don't in the end want a gasoline powered internal combustion dog. I can just imagine having to pull a rip chord in where to start. Yeah, so, how long is your robot pets battery life? Um and doesn't maintain a charge

for like continuous activity or play. Now I can imagine this actually being a horrible thing. If you have, say a small child playing with his or her beloved robot pet and that pets battery runs out and it just collapses to death. That would obviously be traumatic for a kid. Well if you if you said it so that whatever power meter is in the animal robotic pet, so you know there these these devices have meters that read how

much power is available in the battery. Right, So if you were to design the pet in such a way where it starts to give indications that battery power is running low and not just by some sort of flashing light or something, which is the way a lot of our electronics do today, but in ways that are mimicking animal behavior, where got sleepy puppies, get tired, puppies need

to take a nap. So if if it had that kind of more natural kind of yeah, like that's how it demonstrate that needed to be recharged, and that would probably be less traumatic. I can certainly see how that would work very well. And I think one I think the e bow I believe would recharge itself, like it would go back to its charging, it would get back over.

Although you know it's power capacity is certainly a problem in anything, like we've talked about a million times on this show with with small electronics, you're going to run into just sheer battery life issues. The Zoomer, I think only has a half hour of battery life per charge. Yeah right, yeah, I think about just our c cars that I've had in the past, and how quickly like ten minutes. Yeah, you have you have these moments of joy and then you're you suddenly realize that you are done.

That's it, You're done better. You have to have an enormous package of batteries that you're constantly swapping out. So yeah, I mean that's a challenge, that's that's a challenge across all electronics though, and we'll probably do an episode, uh someday about the future of things like battery technology, because that's one of those things that a lot of people

find very frustrating. Yeah. So one of the last things I want to talk about is both maybe the most important of all of these, and it's one of the ones I have the least to say about because I don't know what to tell the people designing these. But it's pet artificial intelligence. Yeah. I mean, just because animals aren't as smart as humans, it doesn't mean that their

intelligence is easy to mimic. Sure, And you know, I think that a feature and a lot of these pets, including the digital pets like the Tamagachi is is a learning process. Sure. Yeah. And by learning, I mean it's we're not talking real machine AI learning. Yeah, it's not like it's not right. It's almost like there are certain behaviors that are unlocked as you interact with the pet. Right, It's more like playing a video game. Yeah, Yeah, like you've unlocked a power up of some sort. Yes, And

that's really really tricky. I mean, that's just a hard problem, period. And it's right there with all other hard problems that are related to artificial intelligence. You know, we're not when we say AI a lot of people I think a lot of people, myself included. Then think about the science fiction or film version of AI, which is essentially a

computer thinking like a person. But artificial intelligence is an enormous field that has lots of different areas of focus, including how do you create an artificial machine that mimics life in a very believable way. My gut feeling is that despite the fact that it's certainly not going to be easy, it will actually be easier than mimicking human intelligence.

I would imagine, so, uh probably, I don't know, my dog is really quirky, but yeah, And I think that it's actually kind of the admittedly kind of dumb, unpredictability of animals that makes them so charming. I mean, all of the YouTube videos, for example, that I'm thinking of that are just my favorites are some are some animal doing something that you never would expect an animal to

have done. Right, Either they've they've done something incredibly clever because they've managed to solve a problem, and that's something we don't typically think animals are capable of doing. But there are plenty of videos out there where you see the animal has totally figured out how to move that chair from that part of the kitchen to a totally different part of the kitchen in order to get up on the counter, in order to open up the toaster of it, in order to get to the chicken McNuggets

that are inside. You know, if it involves getting to food that they're not allowed to have, they'll figure it out.

So if you're able to create an intelligence that can do probably not getting at batteries whether they aren't supposed to get at, but some other kind of behavior that's unexpected, then I think that goes a long way to creating this sort of bond where that's a That's a very important element is the the fact that there needs to be some level of unpredictability, not a lot, but at least enough for that to have that kind of experience that you would have having a an alive pet, an

organic pet. Absolutely, the Eyebow designers were thinking about that. They created a mechanism in which the robot would sometimes not respond to your commands because it just didn't feel like you know, so, which I thought was very cute. Yeah, that's art. Uh. The other thing, of course is price. But we've been talking about that as we've been going along. So one of the encouraging things is as we've been tracking these through time, the price does seem to be

coming down on things that are pretty good. But then again, I have no idea how much one of those Boston Dynamics robots costs. I'm sure tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of thousands, I mean, but but when you think about it, Uh, that's building something that didn't exist before, right, It's like, so it's one thing to talk about developing a new type of robot, because everything you're doing is

from scratch. I mean, even if you're using parts that were made by other companies or that were used in other things, you're putting together in a brand new way, which is always going to be incredibly expensive. But once you've settled on that design and you start to create the manufacturing processes that allow you to make it in

mass quantities, that cost starts to come down. So if if people are able to use elms that have already been created for other purposes and they can repurpose it for the with the intent of creating a robotic animal that could help bring the cost down to it all depends on how you actually go about the process of

building the robot. Yeah, but so now I want to think, if you'all already about some of the actual benefits that we really could get from having robotic pets and animals, because I personally admit that I have a strong prejudice towards actual live animals, like I don't feel in my heart that I could love a robotic animal like I love a real live animal. But there are obviously a lot of ways that a robotic animal really could be

a benefit. And one of the first things that came to my mind when I was writing the script for this video episode was the fact that I and a lot of people like me get anxiety when flying on airplanes. Just don't like it. You know, it's no good And it would be wonderful if I could have an animal with me in an airplane. Wouldn't that be so comforting? If you could have a cat in your lap or have a dog with you. But that makes no sense.

There's no reason airliners should allow animals on. I mean, they could go crazy, And you know, there are very specific rules as to how many animals are allowed to board any flight at a given time. Yes, and and the sizing and all that kind of Yeah, they have to be you know if if they don't fit underneath the seat in front of you, then they have to be in the cargo hold. That kind of stuff. Having a robot animal, though, I mean there you could have

predictable behavior. I mean you you could have it in such a way that there wouldn't really need to be any restriction. Well, not only that, but you could have a quote unquote a pet that you don't have to

worry about setting off some other passengers allergies. Right, so there's no pet dander there, there's nothing that Assuming that whatever materials you're using are not going to set anyone off anyway, then you know, like whatever the fur or skin of that animal is, as long as that's not going to set people off, like it's some sort of weird exotic material that the population immediately breaks out as

soon as they come into contact, don't don't. Don't make the fur out of peanuts and we'll be so yeah, I mean that that would mean that, you know, you you would have yet another objection removed because you would have uh it's something that could help calm you but wouldn't cause distress to other passengers. Right, And then of course you can think of all kinds of other places that animals can't always go, or not all animals could go. In all cases, that would probably be fine if you

had robotic pets. Think restaurants, Think hospitals. I mean, like airplanes, they are these there's places where maybe sometimes animals can be there, but only under restricted conditions I just imagined. I mean, certainly that is a really terrific concept, especially for for people who have found great benefit and therapy animals.

But I was just briefly picturing a terrible dystopia in which all the people that I don't like who carry little dogs around with them, We'll just have carte blanche to to carry little yappie type robots around with them everywhere they go. Well, that's why you have to carry one of those remote controls around with you. That just

turns things off. Okay, dystopia, dystopia, okay, Okay. Another thing I do want to think about is something about the interest of the animals themselves, because there are people who would love to have an animal companion when they can have it, but maybe they're very busy, um a lot. Yeah, or and so I think it would be in those cases maybe unethical, like say you work long hours all the time, or you travel a whole lot to just leave or live animal that's having real experiences and emotions

by itself all the time. Oh absolutely, I have worked from home two or three days a week and I still feel bad leaving my dog the other days. Yeah. Same here. But so if you could have a robotic pet, you could still get some of that experience of having a companion, some of that you know, and it would help give you all those feelings of love and companionship that an animal would, but you wouldn't be leaving it on its own. You wouldn't be causing an actual living

animal distress by leaving it all right. On a similar level, um, you know, maintenance of the pet. If if you don't have time to take care of it, to get it to vet visits, to to give it a bath, et cetera, to take it on walks and most you know, more dog cases than cat cases probably, but yeah, yeah, that that could also matter if you're a really busy person.

But think also, like say, if you are elderly or have a disability that would prevent you from being able to provide that animal all the caret needs, right sure, yeah, so there's benefits on two different aspects there, right, So

uh yeah, that's perfectly legitimate. These these last couple of examples, if I can, if I can be depressing statistics girl for just a second, could be really especially fab considering that the Humane Society of the United States estimates that some two point seven million adoptable cats and dogs are put to sleep every year to shelter over population. And

you know, okay, this this means a few things. And and in a more practical example, you know, adopt a pet from a shelter if you're going to adopt one, while we do not have robotic pets yet, and as spa a newter that pet because it's a really good plan, but but more pertinent to our current conversation. You know, an increase in robotic pets, I think could mean a decrease in the number of unwanted animals over time, as fewer pets are abandoned or have accidental letter litters. And

that could be just so good. Yeah exactly. Uh well, I mean, let me ask you guys a quick question, because I mean, there are other things we could talk about. I mean, obviously, you know, we could actually get into the utility of a robotic pet beyond companionship, like, for example, the big dog ones that are made for the military

and made to carry a load. You could, in theory have these robotic pets that are actually very useful for things like if you want to go camping, but you don't want to have to carry a forty pound backpack on your back, you could actually have a robot being able to do that. And whereas I would feel bad strapping my actual dog down with her, doesn't your dog way like fourteen pounds or something. She's like a forty pounds,

but she's arthritic. Mine only wighs twelve pounds. If I strapped a forty pound backpack to my dog, I would have a dog on his back with his little legs waving in the air. Here's another thing you might not have thought of, or maybe you did, because I think I wrote it in the script, which is I don't. I don't think when I do your scripts. I just I just okay, no, imagine a dog with GPS in it.

So you go out on a run with your dog, and you could be in an unfamiliar city, or you could go down a path you've never been before, and your dog with you would be able to navigate for you. You know, you couldn't get lost with this dog with you. You know it knows the city streets how to lead you back. Uh, it could even warn you, you know, like, oh, it's connected to your weather app and say, hey, it's

about to start raining in thirty minutes. Yeah. Yeah, it's post to my dog, who is an anti navigational system. In fact, she she if if I followed her, we would never get home. My dog is nearly blind and almost completely deaf, so following my dog is a terrible, terrible mistake. So we just end up in a corner somewhere, and we've we we've talked a few times here about about using therapy animals and and you know, robots have have totally been used for more than just emotional therapy.

There's a bunch of trials going on for for teacher robots to see whether groups like a like like kids with autism could possibly benefit from robot therapy. And the short answer so far is yes, absolutely they can. Um you know, kids have trouble with things like eye contact or coordinated movement or taking turns have totally opened up with these these patient synchronous therapy robots. Okay, now, I've

got a question for for all three of us. And I didn't really think about this before I came in here, but the question is, let's say we're in the amazing future where you know, we've got our animal pets and we love them, but we also have the opportunity to own a robot pet that perfectly mimics some sort of animal. What sort of animal would you pick? Let's let's limit it to real animals. Okay, well we'll go to two choices. One that's a real animal, though it could be a

real animal from any era in Earth's history. And the second is any kind of imaginative, fantastical animal. Ever, So, uh, Lauren, you go first. I I'm a little bit obsessed with otters right now, and I mean those how those things are just so cute and you would never want to own a real one, sure that would be terribly cruel to the to the otter there. But but but a

robotic one, sure, yeah, if it's completely realistic. And yeah, I mean and if I can afford a robot otter, I could clearly afford to have a swimming pool and we could just we could just float on our backs holding hands. That's that's great. Okay, do you have one for your Do you want to come back around for fantasy?

All right, so Joe, it's your turn. Okay. So I would probably go with weasel, so along the line, it's not a lot of ferret, but a weasel interesting or something something that would normally attack you and bite you a whole lot. But this won't right right, well, theoretically wolverine, wolverine or skunk creatures that are often rabid in nature. Maybe, Well, for my real one, I'm gonna go with Dodo. I

would like I would like a robotic Dodo. I think I think, you know, from all the pictures, I think Dodos look really kind of a little clumsy and a little, you know, just a little a little they look a little dorky. They look a little dorky, And I think, but to me, it has sort of an adorable, you know, aspect to that. It's not like, you know, something that I find off putting. I actually find it endearing. Birds are terrifying. So I'm not going to come over to

your house when you have a robot Dodo. Well, I won't necessarily have it, you know, behave accurately, but still terrifying. Okay, alright, so fantasy, Lauren, you know Joe's already piped up. I guess. So I'm gonna go with David Bowie from Labyrinth. It will may be the most popular person in the world. Oh no, I want to redo my miniature luck Dragon. Oh okay, so from Never Ending Story. All right, that's your fantasy. Well, okay, so I should do a real

Zies fantasy one and not just David Bowie from Labyrinth. Um, because I think about all the all the the Jim Henson creations he's made, and I mean those are like like kind I want a little skexy Okay, alright, or I got you that one, yeah, uh yeah, I mean I just think about all the heck, I would love to have a completely you know, realistic sort of Muppet character, any of the Muppets right as that would be like that would be a gold mine if they can make those.

I mean, just to have something that would have that kind of personality, Like I would love to have, you know, maybe Fauzy the Bear, because he and I have a very similar sense of humor, and our jokes are pretty much, you know, same, the same level of awesome. Yeah, so I'm sorry, Lauren. Oh I'm I am not even sure anymore. That's too many opportunity, many choices, one of everything. Yeah, giant cracking. You know, I'll go, I'll go giant cracking while I've got a swimming pool. Uh why not? Yeah,

there you go. It's furry squid. Yeah, it would certainly giant cracking. It would discourage people from getting in your pool when you haven't allowed them to. It's a it's a good auto protection system. It is your honor is perfectly safe due to the cracking security tool. Alright, so well, you know what, let's open up that question to all of our listeners out there. If you guys could have some s sort of robotic pet, whether it's realistic or imaginative,

you should let us know. Hey, we have an email address we do FW thinking at Discovery dot com. You can actually write us and tell us what your choices, or if you prefer, you can let us know on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus. We have the handle fw Thinking at all three locations. Remember to go to f W thinking dot com to see the videos and listen to other podcasts and read the blogs. I'm going to try to do a blog post with some of the videos of these of these robots that we've been

talking about, so so go find and check that out. Yeah, and uh, make sure you've become part of this conversation. We're looking forward to hearing from you and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places