The age of robopets

Steven Spielberg’s summer movie A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) imagined a world where parents purchase synthetic children to fill their emotional needs. Today, Japan is not too far behind: synthetic pets are the hottest gift items this Christmas, and Sony’s got ’em.

These are not the primitive barking tin dogs of Woody Allen’s futuristic comedy Sleeper ("Hello... I’m Rags... Woof! Woof!"). No, these battery-operated beauties can sing, dance, climb stairs, and provide useful medical and weather information to senior citizens.

And while the new mechanical pets won’t threaten to replace your dog Fido or your cat Fifi anytime soon, they do have their advantages: they don’t die, they don’t shed, they hardly age, and they won’t chew up your furniture or leave any nasty surprises on your carpets.

Welcome to the age of Robopets.

Kitty is a Tekno Kitten, a robot pet with the intelligence of an eight-week-old kitten. She can "meow" in many expressive ways, cry when unhappy, wiggle her tail and purr when petted. That’s standard for a real kitten, but Kitty is also programmed for speech: she can say "kitty," "thank you," "yummy," and "pet me." Even more remarkably, she dances – after a fashion – moving her head in sync with music from three different songs. (You can even set Kitty like an alarm clock, to serenade you with these songs in the morning.)

Kitty also does adorable tricks like pouncing: "Kitty will stalk her prey, look around, move around slowly and quietly and then pounce on an object."

According to the sales pitch (found on the website, robotoys.com), "She can think for herself and will act differently depending on what is happening to her or how she is played with. It all depends on her emotional state based on the situation around her... Kitty has a mind of her own!"

Actually, what she has are four AA-size batteries. But the sales pitch clues us in to the real attraction of these synthetic pets: the illusion of life, and the promise of companionship. "With your care and understanding," the ad says, "Kitty will be your friend for life!’

Then there’s Latte, a milky-colored robot dog that Sony is offering for about $850 this Christmas. Latte has voice-recognition technology, so it can learn to respond to its master’s call. He boasts 15 degrees of movement (head, neck, mouth, ears, legs, paws, tail), a 75-word vocabulary, motion detection and photo-taking capabilities, as well as touch sensors on various parts of its body. Talk about teaching an old dog new tricks.

Latte is part of Sony’s AIBO (short for Artificial Intelligence Robot) series, priced at up to $2,500 this season. The AIBO Entertainment Robots allow owners to "enter the world of digital reality – interaction between humans and robots. AIBO, with its own emotions and instincts, learns and grows through human interaction and from its environment."

"Physically, every AIBO is the same," said Nick Twyman, director of Sony Entertainment Robots Europe, "but every one ends up different because they have different experiences."

Is this a Brave New World of pet ownership, or something a little more sinister?

It used to be kids were content to own pet rocks. This short-lived ’70s craze found eager children buying and naming small rocks, some with tufts of artificial hair attached. Then there were Chia Pets: small, ceramic four-legged creatures that didn’t move, but could grow a convincing green lawn on their backs if you watered them. For some reasons, these advances in pet technology failed to enthrall children forever.

Next came the Tamagotchis, which were a huge worldwide hit in 1996. Tamagotchis, you will recall, allowed millions of buyers to carry around a pocket Nintendo-sized pet – a little black-and-white graphic of a dog or cat that walked back and forth across a low-definition screen, barked, pooped, and slept. The virtual pet would grow bigger when you fed it, or end up in a pet cemetery if you were too busy checking your text messages.

That Japanese innovation now seems like the "Pong" of virtual pets. The new generation is eerily advanced and looks to sell hundreds of thousands come Christmastime.

Not just cats and dogs, but a variety of household pets can be purchased from robotoys.com, an online pet shop that offers cut-price robotic fish, turtles, frogs, birds, even tiny mechanized dinosaurs and Godzilla. The "Aquaroid" series (including jellyfish, ammonites and robotic fish) sell at about $65 and will "gracefully move up and down in your aquarium."

While most of the world has a rather cold conception of robots, Time writer Tim Larimer notes that, in Japan, things are very different. "The ease with which the Japanese turn their machines into pets, whether it’s the Tamagotchi, Sony’s AIBO robot dog or an electronic pager, can be explained in part by Japan’s rich spiritual tradition." Animism – the belief that inanimate objects possess souls – could explain the fascination with robots. "My grandmother believes even a small stone on the road has a soul inside," says Atsuo Takanishi, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tokyo’s Waseda University. "It’s not a big leap to believe the same thing about a machine. In Japan, we don’t distinguish between organic and inorganic things."

Japan was quick to embrace robot technology in its factories after the second World War, and now employs 410,000 robots to manufacture everything from cars to cell phones. Half the world’s robots are used in Japan.

But it doesn’t end there. Japan’s mechanical engineers – brought up to admire and appreciate robot technology from its earliest childhood cartoons, whether Astro Boy to Voltes V – are on the lookout for the next generation of Entertainment Robots.

Some will be servants – again recalling the Woody Allen robot butler from Sleeper – while others will carry out important life functions for the elderly – give them weather reports, remind them to take their medicine and link them to hospitals and community centers via the Internet.

And some – according to A.I.’s bold premise – will be sexbots: mechanical gigolos and windup tarts available round the clock.

But some engineers have slightly higher goals in mind, if you believe Waseda physicist Shuji Hashimoto: "What I want is a robot that is like my wife."

Hashimoto doesn’t say whether this model would come with an ON/OFF switch.