The robo-cat could be hypo-allergenic.

It does have a way to go though. Real cats have about 26 calls, this one has 4.

It probably doesn't tear up the furnature, though ;-)

Does it leave duracells around as little presents?

LOL!!

I am the Lord.
God Hates Moderators.

It is. From the article:

Microphones embedded in the cat's head enable her to recognise her own name and react by turning her head and blinking coyly.

Cassandra dun said:

Microphones embedded in the cat's head enable her to recognise her own name and react by turning her head and blinking coyly.

Awwwwwwww :3 (You do realise that kitty "slow blinky eyes" is actually how kitties "kiss" each other, right? It's basically kitty-ese for "I love you", along with kitty making biscuits on you ("Mommy!") and nuzzling you ("You're mine and I'm marking you as mine and nobody else can have you"). Seriously. Get a good book on kitty body language like Catwatching...)

(As an aside, sometimes I've wondered if that's why me and Demi get along so well. I can "speak" cat, she does a better-than-average job for kitties at "speaking" human, so we can actually have pretty involved conversations. ;)

Deprecated dun said:

What kind of a cat responds to its name? A proper robot cat will learn its name, but will not respond.

Actually, my cat will respond to her name, either by coming over or making little chirpy-meows at you or meowing "for ME?".

Then again, it can truthfully be said that my cat isn't exactly a normal kitty, either. Firstly, her name is Dementia (Demi for short) because as a kitten, her first act upon being brought home was to chase her tail and bite it continuously for five hours straight (and even to this day, she will still occasionally do it...chasechasechase, bite, "ow", licklicklick, "ooh, it's MOVING!", chasechasechase...rolling around in a ball of kitty). Secondly, she is about the only non-Siamese-descended kitty I know of that makes a concerted effort to learn English (Demi is what is known in cat circles as an Exotic Shorthair--half-Persian, half American Shorthair--they have very plush, almost chinchilla-like coats and shorter faces than most farm-kitties)...she can say "For me?", "Mom", "Throw it" VERY clearly, and she mutter-meows other stuff (like when she is having a conversation with Mommy or Daddy). Thirdly, Anything Mommy Does, Demi Must Do (including asking Mommy if clothes are for her, trying to help Mommy post to Slashdot, trying to help Mommy and/or Daddy fix dinner while asking if it's for her, etc.). She will even copy mannerisms at times...including trying to dance once when her dad went "Bust a move, Demi!" trying to get her off of a FAQ for a Playstation game :). Fourthly, for some weird reason her catnip gene never kicked in until she was two years old, and her catnip abuse consists of the following: a) roll on bag of catnip and attempt to kill bag. b) Pick up a mouthful and throw it after huffing catnip fumes when Mommy opens bag to get some out for Demi. c) Spend next four hours licking walls, carpet, and any other available objects. Fifthly, she was one of the few cats I've ever seen who drool when excited (she's finally gotten over that, thank Goddess).

This is why she is generally known as Demi the half-a-kitty around the house. The body is definitely that of a kitty. The brain, we have doubts about ;) (And it's not because she's imprinted on humans, either...my husband got her when she was twelve weeks old (near the top limit of when you CAN adopt kittens before they start turning feral on you) and she'd lived all her life before then as a farm-kitten (among working farm-cats). She's just crazy. ;)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)

[Extended rambling deleted]

How did this inane rec.pets.cats post get redirected to slashdot?

On a side note, I read an article in the paper a few months ago about a craft store that sold realistic looking cat statues. It was later found out some were made of real cat pelts. Maybe they'll try that.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't. :P)

Due to this post, a monkey with antlers strapped to its head was set free in a forest in Mebane, North Carolina. An hour later, the monkey was found dead... strapped to the hood of some yokel's truck.

LouZiffer
Every printer is built from three basic components: Case, jammed paper trays, and blinking lights.

I think the name Script Kitty is funnier...

It is, but Illiad wasn't the first to think of it. Check out the Script Kittie on the OpenBSD 2.6 cover art. He isn't explicitly called that on the cover, but that's what he's called on the t-shirt page.

I think that the cat is sort of dumb (The UF cat, not the BSD one!). Perhaps Illiad a bit distracted about going to CeBIT? Or maybe his creative juices are running low after the kick-ass "Pitr the Borg vs. Crud Puppy" arc.

Hmmm, what should Pitr's "Borg name" be? I'm wagering on "vi of IX". (Emacs users, just ignore that.) ;-)

Yes, it's official. Jesus uses vi.

I am the Lord.
God Hates Moderators.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't. :P)

For their service, I will provide robotic modifications - ultraviolet lasers with a 1.5M volt output (ultraviolet lasers leave the air the laser fired through ionized providing a path for electrons to follow. Think: tesla coil), evil glowing eyes, 180 db pizo-electric buzzers from hell and IR / RF outputs to mess with electronics. These will be the pets from hell

I like that.. the perfect compliment to a BOFH's LART - 30 evil robotic cats. "Awww, aren't they cute - look at those 6" long metal claws.... oh.. wait..." *electronic growling* RUN FOOL RUN!!!!!

Buwhahahaahahahaha!

-o Question authority! Yeah, says who? o-

"do or do not, there is no try" Yoda, Jedi Muppet

Then, my oldest son started hacking the variables and he was able to alter the behavior, looks etc. Came up with several mutations that weren't too far off from your description, big buggy eyes, huge teeth etc.

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

I'm not even going to bother to elaborate.

-o Question authority! Yeah, says who? o-

... eat loads of fluff off of the carpet and then make retching noises and puke up in the corner? :)

Homer: Ooh, I want to pet Santa's Little Helper again.
Marge: Homer, you just petted him. Why don't you pet the cat.
Homer: The cat? What's the point?

No one wants to email you, so don't waste bandwidth telling people how to.

-Sit comatose for hours on end
-Meow incessantly for no reason whatsoever
-Mindlessly scratch all furniture it sees to shreads
-Ignore everything that people say to it

The technology to accomplish this has existed for decades.

:-)

--
This could lead to some interesting "dialouge."

- comatose? Check!
- ignoring all external stimuli? Check!
- fiercely territorial? Check!
- social only before mealtimes? Check!

My goodness -- I'm the behavioral model for RoboCat! I wonder if it knows Perl?

--
Thoughts on the Revolution

squeeze_into_tiny_space() /* awww */, and
hide(boolean tail_sticking_out) /* it's not a bug if you document it */

What we really need is a critter with a loadable personality module. Depending on your mood when you get home from work, you can have it greet you with frantic good cheer, or ignore you. And you'd be *amazed* the tricks you could teach him if he has a scripting language and a serial port.

--
It's never too late to panic.

When talking cars came out "The door is ajar." I thought it would be fun to produce personality modules to replace the ho-hum voices vehicles came with. At the time, Mr. T was a celebrity and I thought the Mr. T version could say, "You left the door open, FOOL! When's that las' time you checked the oil in this thang?!"

Dogs aren't more affectionate, they're just less discriminating. ;>

-Kahuna Burger

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with every Microsoft product.

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with every Microsoft product.

Crusoe could even be used to keep it running longer than the one hour that Tama can run at.

It could be a new distro dubbed RoboLinux, or something like that.

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with every Microsoft product.

Hussein died from severe head injuries after he was transferred to a dispensary in Ajawa, the newspaper quoted Abdi Gosho, a nurse in the village, as saying.

Attempts to confirm the story were unsuccessful. Police in Wajir, contacted by telephone from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, had no information about the alleged incident.

The report did not specify what kind of monkey carried out the purported attack. Baboons have been known to throw objects at rivals.

-- Set laser printers to stun and prepare to beam down.

Nick (hiding behind sofa)

PS For those of you who have never seen Bagpuss, think Reanimator crossed with those Chucky movies.
--- One at a time or all together, it makes no odds to me.

_______

Mello like the Yello, but without the fizz.

If you like Transformers and UT, stop here.

Robo-dog make way for robo-cat. Furry feline robot 'Tama' is Japanese company Omron's answer to the popular Sony robot dog Aibo

...

The COMPANY is callled Omron.

Toshihiro Tashima, Tama's creator, says that

The HUMAN CREATOR of Tama is callled Toshihiro Tashima.

Please get the facts right to avoid future embarassment.

--
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

After all, cat don't do what you tell them to. In fact, they do whatever they want, whether you want them to do it or not. They can crash anywhere and everywhere. They will also consume all space, and are very curious about the enviroment they're installed in!

Of course, cat enthusiests would say that this is a feature, not a bug.

"There's too many men, too many people, making too many problems"--Genesis, "World of Confusion"

I'm also a little put off by trying to make it look like a real cat. They missed the mark. At least AIBO is only stylistically similar to a dog. Robotic pets might be a little more enjoyable if they don't pattern themselves too closely after real animals.

Who would want to have to "walk" AIBO or scoop out Tama's litterbox?

Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: read it

Adam 56

Human

--
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

You may also be interested to to know that Tama is probably the most common name for cats in Japan.

"The difference between Genius and Stupidity is that Genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein

Hard to pass on a Critic reference, regardless of how far I have to go to make it.

1. Find a dead cat, or make one yourself (this is the fun part)
2. Stuff it (the cat, not you!)

In his visionary novel, set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, live animals are mostly extinct, and artificial (designed and genetically engineered, although not robotic) animals and humans exist as luxury objects.

It's ironic and sad that we keep looking for, and hoping to discover, life on other planets, when at the same time we're eliminating those on our own. Someday, as spaceships probe planet after planet for life in remote galaxies and come up emptyhanded, and we realize how special and precious our little ecological fluke of a planet is, we will understand this better. Until then we're doomed to shoot ourselves in our feet, collectively, and unknowingly.

Perhaps one day we'll learn to develop such artificial creatures complex enough to serve as substitutes for the real kind, and we'll forget about the real ones. As human settlements expand (and they do), we'll eventually overrun the animal kingdom, which already has a large number of endangered species.

I suspect that, sometime in the future, not too far off, we will have ceased to look upon the idea of a robotic animal only as a quaint, cute, and practical toy with a convenient "off" button, but as the only available alternative. Welcome to a penguin-less future.

AC: "Hello, this is Anonymous Coward"

Lawyer: "This Roy R. Lawyer, legal cousel for Pablonius"

AC: "So?"

Lawyer: "Pablonius got fired for viewing 'pr0n' on-the-job"

AC: "So?"

Lawyer: "Pablonius is pretty stupid, isn't he?"

AC: "Yeah." ----
Well, Pablonius, there's an important lesson to be learned from being stupid. Unfortunately, it's always the same: Dont be stupid.