The Shape of Robots to Come

March 16, 2006
By MICHEL MARRIOTT
A segmented tower on a metal and plastic base swiveled around. Two glowing segments, suggesting a head, tilted forward and spoke: "Hello. My name is Scoty. Let me explain a few things about myself."
In a vaguely female synthesized voice — but always in plain English — Scoty, the latest robot from the robotic-toy maker WowWee, demonstrated its functions for a visitor recently.
Chief among them are managing a personal computer's communication and entertainment abilities, finding and playing songs by voice request, recording television shows, telling users when they have e-mail and, again by voice request, reading the e-mail aloud. It takes and then sends voice-to-text e-mail dictation. It takes pictures, and gives the time when asked.
Scoty, pronounced Scotty, has no keyboard and does not require mastery of any specialized computer languages to nudge it to perform and reply in a likeable human manner, its makers said.
While its name stands for smart companion operating technology, "Scoty is more of a companion than operating technologies," said Richard Yanofsky, president of WowWee, which is based in Hong Kong. For lack of a better term, he said, Scoty, which is 24 inches tall, is a "digital maid."
As robots increasingly migrate from heavy industrial tasks, like welding automobile chassis on assembly lines, to home uses as restless toys and venturesome vacuum cleaners, a fetching personality and appealing appearance become critically important. A flashy show called "Robots: The Interactive Exhibition" is touring museums and science centers in the United States through 2012 with the aim of demystifying robotics, especially their harder edges.
"Robots are an evergreen," said Eddie Newquist, president of the creative division at the Becker Group, which makes displays for malls, museums and theme parks and created the interactive exhibition based on the computer-animated feature film "Robots" and its themes of invention. "Kids are always fascinated by robots."
But robotics makers and experts say marvelous mechanics and electronic intelligence are not enough to lure consumers. Robotic novelties that could command steep prices from some early adopters are giving way to lower-priced products (though still rather expensive for toys) that offer personality, utility or both.
At the American International Toy Fair last month in New York, being a robot for a robot's sake appeared to be a losing bet. Sony said it was ending production on its $2,000 Aibo robotic dogs, which are shiny and aggressively techie. In the meantime, Hasbro announced that it was adding cuddly electronic animals to its successful and largely modestly priced FurReal line of toys, including a $30 baby chimpanzee.
"The impetus for FurReal was that we wanted to make the most realistic plush animal that existed up until that time," said Sharon John, general manager of Hasbro, which is based in Pawtucket, R.I. "Robotics were a means to an end, not the end itself."
In a departure from its smaller toys, Hasbro is introducing what it calls a "realistic, life-size" miniature pony, Butterscotch My FurReal Friends Pony, that will be sensitive to light and touch and will embody enough robotics to, among other things, turn its head to see who tickled its ears and shake its head after "eating" its carrot.
It will sniff and whinny and respond to soothing voices when it becomes frightened by the dark or by too much commotion around it, company spokesmen said. And it is made to bear the weight of young children and simulate galloping. Available in the fall, it is expected to cost $300.
Like Butterscotch, many of the robotic toys shown at the toy fair were engineered to conceal their joints and metallic jowls beneath furry pelts and cute doll faces. Even traditional robots, like WowWee's Robosapien series, were packed with more personality than previous models.
Some strived to be friendly, like the coming I-Cat "interactive music companion" from Hasbro's Tiger Electronics brand, a follow-up on last year's I-Dog, a robotic dog speaker accessory for digital music players.
While both the I-Cat and the I-Dog are furless and highly stylized, Ms. John noted that both make use of colored L.E.D. lights that are diffused inside their smooth, seamless and translucent bodies. Scoty, whose core technologies were developed by Philips Home Dialogue Systems in Germany, uses the same approach. Its smooth, segmented body glows with different colors signifying that it is "listening" to and "understanding" requests.
"The overall mission is to find ways of bringing robotics into useful interaction with people," said Colin Angle, chief executive of iRobot, the makers of government and industrial robots as well as consumer ones, including its Roomba series of vacuum cleaners and Scooba floor washers.
"We tried to figure out how to do that," he said. "The challenges are that high technologies can be viewed as scary and distancing."
Besides, Mr. Angle said, his company, which is based in Burlington, Mass., near Boston, is less interested in selling robots to "gadget people" than to residents of "Middle America looking for better ways of living their lives and looking for a little help."
IRobot's popular consumer robots are shaped like overfed Frisbees and roll inconspicuously on tiny wheels performing their tasks. Mr. Angle said there was little efficiency in building highly functioning robots in anthropomorphic form. "It's wildly impractical to do so in any real sense," he said of organic-looking robots.
Yet, many Roomba owners say they discern endearing traces of a personality in the artificially intelligent discs, prompting some users, Mr. Angle said, to name their robots. It was such emotional attachments that led the company to base its new television advertising campaign on the phrase "I love robots."
IRobot, which went public last November, has sold more than 1.5 million Roombas, which cost about $300, since they were introduced in late 2002. The company reported revenue of $142 million in 2005, a 49 percent increase over 2004.
Late last year, the company introduced the iRobot Scooba floor-washing robot, a $400 device that washes, scrubs and dries hard floors with no more prompting than a touch of a button.
"The simplicity of the interaction is one of the most critical things," Mr. Angle said.
It is a point not lost on a range of robots heading for store shelves this year.
Playmates Toys is extending its Amazing series of computerized dolls, which introduced the voice-recognition-assisted Amazing Amanda last year. In the fall it will introduce Amazing Allysen, which is a "tween" rather than a baby doll like its little sister, and requires little more from children than simply to touch it and talk to it.
Its face emotes electronically as it speaks and listens, its makers say. The $100 doll also has a richer vocabulary and keener object recognition than its predecessor, said a spokesman for Playmates, which is in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Mr. Yanofsky of WowWee said he and his company had worked hard to ensure that when Scoty was released later this year — at a price he expected to be $400 — it would be simple to set up and operate.
A demonstration video shows Scoty being removed from its packaging and prompting a new user. "You need to install some software in your computer before I become fully alive," it said.
Mr. Yanofsky said that WowWee planned to release additional robotic companion devices in the coming years. "At the end of the day there will be a seamless interaction with machines in a manner that will be very close to human experience," he said.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company