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+--- Thread: gadget concept: Pookymoto (/showthread.php?tid=12230)
gadget concept: Pookymoto - classicdrogn - 01-23-2016
On the border of sleep and waking, I had an idea, which I wanted to write down and decided to share.
Physically, a Pookymoto would be similar to a Sony Aibo only leaning more towards cat than dog - it would have a rumble function to simulate a purr, and at least surface sensors to tell when its being petted, possibly synthetic fur so it feels soft and warm as well. Also an inductance charging "pet bed", or at least a mat that can be put in a pet bed and means of tracking its location at household range to automatically find it for "naps" and possibly low-powered heating system that activates when it's using the wall power, and a function to go back and "rest" instead of starting a new play behaviour if its temperature falls below a certain range. Also integrated: optical sensor specifically tuned to the laser pointer frequency, so it can hunt the little red dot.
The main feature though is that it has only minimal onboard processing power, being controlled via bluetooth or wifi by an app on the user's smartphone or computer, and can be accessed and played with like a normal virtual pet. This lets the onboard hardware be cheap while still allowing for very complex behavior and computation-heavy decision making to be programmed, and for easy propagation (or rollback) of upgrades to that without needing to modify the onboard software.
Ideally both the onboard and control app would include learning functions to deal with irregular and changing terrain (onboard) and play behavior (remote) but that may be too far out on the cutting edge. Various settings for travel speed and general desired activity level/level of owner involvement in play behaviour would be the absolute minimum here.
Integration with games that feature pets would also be possible, though unlikely bar some kind of big money deal with an existing property or creating one from scratch.
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