Trying to capitalize on the success of electronic pets, high Christmas sales of Robosapien and the increasing popularity of MP3 players such as Apple's iPod, Sega Toys revealed plans to launch iDog, a new "music entertainment pet".  The electronic pet is able to actually "feel" four emotions: anger, humor, joy and pathos.  These emotions are expressed via seven colored LED lights mounted on the face. 

Built into this gizmo is an MP3 player that can store roughly 70 children themes and is also able to mimic one's voice (via playing sounds that are in a similar wavelength).  The pet is touch-sensitive: touching its noise will trigger a happy mood, while touching the tail will cause the dog to become upset.  The iDog also comes with a built-in microphone and analog audio input, which makes it also a rather different type of karaoke machine.

SegaToys is planning to distribute the iDog in 57 countries across the world, and the launch in the Japanese market is planned for April 2.  The company hopes to sell half a million units in Japan alone, and the iDog will definitely be distributed in the US, so it is expected it will be a hot seller over this side of the Ocean as well.

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About Robotics.  I received feedback on a couple of fronts.  First, Swan Solutions Managing Director Bart Delgado (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Inter-Tel's analyst conference earlier this month) had an interesting insight about the Seiko Epson flying micro robot video link that I included in a TF entry last year.  Bart makes a few interesting observations, including the pendulum-like motion and the blue background.  I went back to the Gizmodo entry on the same topic, and did not see any updates.  Funny how the Gizmodo folks also noticed the "enthusiasm" of the demo girl.  But I will have to see this flying micro robot for myself before making any judgments. 

Bart, being a big heli enthusiast, mentioned the Hirobo XRB Sky Robo Silver Lama (shown to the left), a radio controlled electric indoor heli, as being the closest available robot to this Seiko Epson model.  Bart also gave me a verbal update on UK sales of Robosapien, the robot that I nearly bought while visiting Boston last summer with wife.  According to Bart, this was one of the hottest toys sold during Christmas, for an 80£ price tag.  Indeed, according to this Times Online article, Hamleys (a London toy shop) expected to sell 180,000 models, whereas online gadget shop sold 20,000.

Another TF reader from the Netherlands, who has been actively involved in robotics research, designed quite a provocative scientific calendar.  The calendar is meant as a nice joke, showing robots in some insinuating positions (please see photo to the right) or showing their "private parts".  Of course, the idea of the calendar is to provide information about robotics conferences and events, but with a slightly different, funny twist.  No porn is tolerated here at TF, but the eRobotica 2005 PlayBot Calendar is given a "poetic license" here, since it disseminates robotics conferences info in a quite creative fashion.  So be sure to check out their web site and download your copy of the calendar!   more »