Like me, Loona the Petbot is dumb but lovable • TechCrunch

I wanted It’s been a robotic pet since at least Sony introduced the original Aibo in 1999. Since then, there have been steady attempts to bring robotic pets to life that match those commonly seen in futuristic sci-fi, including his recent Aibo reboot, animatronic pet dinosaur Pleo, Furby, Jibo, and Anki’s Cosmo. has been done. Loona the Petbot threw her hat into the ring via her Kickstarter late last year. Based on some very impressive demos of her videos, this looked like a real-life accomplishment for her Pixar character.

Loona has actually shipped to some of its early backers, with April set as the timeframe for current orders via Indiegogo, and KEYI, the company behind it, made an adorable debut at CES earlier this month. They were demoing a small bot.The company even sent Loona to me at the time.

foundation

At its core, Loona is a demonstration of four-wheeled image recognition and robotics technology in a surprisingly affordable package. The current Indiegogo “in-demand” pre-order asking price is $359 for the package, which includes select accessories, down from the planned retail asking price of $500.

With videos and GIFs from its debut crowdfunding campaign, Loona aims to hit the loveliness glands of potential buyers, professionally pairing animated eyes with the ‘face’ of the display. Shows a robot that exudes charm and individuality, and expresses glowing ears with joints. Hints, and her two arm/leg combos with wheels at each end help propel her forward and create hand or foot gestures.

The face on the screen is bright and high-definition, and the camera array that drives Loona’s perceptors sits directly below it, at this point going down an anthropomorphic path, so you could even call it a ‘jaw’. The robot also has touch sensors for interaction, such as the top of its head that can be stroked.

Equipped with a microphone and speaker, Luna can also hear and respond to her owner’s voice (though strictly non-verbally). Using the companion smartphone app to set up her Loona, you can set the voice recognition language and see various prompts the robot is pre-programmed to respond to so you can test it out.

design

Loona’s core strength lies in its industrial design, which fuses a retro-futuristic sci-fi robotics aesthetic (very reminiscent of WALL-E’s EVE) with an ultra-efficient approach to mechanical engineering. A wide range of possible emotions and quite expressive communication. Her ABS plastic shell and rubber tracks on the outside are also durable. This is suitable for robots that may bump into objects or be harassed by real live animal pets or human children.

There is one notable exception to this. This is clearly demonstrated on Loona right out of the box. A robot’s ears are particularly susceptible to damage if pulled too far. This makes sense considering it has an internal motor and is probably the lightest. whole connector. In other words, Luna’s ears are the Achilles’ heel, which is probably why my dog ​​tried to chew on them (gently) in the first place. But if you can keep up with those relatively light treatments, there’s no reason to expect Luna not to survive bumps, scrapes, or even the occasional fall.

Much of Loona’s flexible mobility and expressiveness comes from one of the key elements of the robot’s design. Its four wheels are attached via his single axle in the center of the body. This allows Loona to turn on a dime, raise its “legs”, raise and lower its head, all in a relatively simple mechanical package, leaving multiple potential points of failure and movement complexities. You can avoid introducing ugliness. programming side.

All in all, Loona combines incredible ingenuity in terms of its design to cut costs significantly while introducing the charm and visual appeal of a much more complex robotic pet.

performance

Loona’s physical design may be a masterclass in getting the most out of smart constraints, but the robot’s programming, performance, and interactive behavior are disastrously hopeless and under-delivered. An example. When the crowdfunding campaign was first launched, we made sure the video was real footage and not a rendering. The company says so, but in practice he finds that with Loona he has to carefully shoot, select and edit those shots to convey the level. The feeling that they are somehow communicating.

In reality, Loona has a lot of charisma, and while it’s certainly a technical achievement in terms of its movements and mannerisms, using it isn’t like living in a Pixar movie, it’s a meow. It’s like having a rumba that makes sounds.

I will say that I really like the setup and first run experience. It means that it is animated by something like a seeded spirit. Seed Spirit, of course, has a super adorable bubble bat that is a must for any cute animated character. Spirits travel through portals and appear inside Loona, animate screens and add new meaning to the old “Toys to Life” product category.

Once connected to your Wifi network and sparked to life, the Loona app will guide you through a demo of some of its features, including facial recognition (and marking you as owner) and basic voice commands. , is where the experience turned from magic to chaos. During the initial face setup, Luna lost sight of me and spun around in circles with a somewhat pathetic cry while trying to find me again. This has been fixed, but when I moved to voice commands, I had a hard time figuring out how to determine when Loona was in listening mode after first saying the wake word (‘Loona’, of course). Did. Listen to the actual command and translate it into action in at most half the time.

All in all, this is where Loona really falls short of its promise. The visual system seems to work only occasionally, despite attempts to lower and raise itself to optimize the line of sight. Attempting to engage a cardboard and red cloth bullfighting cape) only worked part of the time (the cape had no effect at all). When it works, it’s really fun, like when you find the ball, approach it, and try to hit it with your arm. But in my use, it was hit or miss at best with both visual and voice input.

Loona offers many other interactive options such as direct remote control using the app’s virtual controller. There are also programming tools that allow him to run Loona with completely customized routines and sequences. This is also fun and educational as an activity with children.

Robots are also effortlessly charming when left alone. It walks around, cools, discovers random things, and occasionally gets stuck on furniture (you need to avoid objects to avoid doing this). itself. This behavior is perhaps the most pet-like, puzzling and endearing in the pursuit of God-Knows-What.

Conclusion

Given how impressive the launch visuals were, there was no chance Loona lived up to expectations. But this robot fails to deliver on its most basic promises when it comes to recognizing sounds and images, and is much harder to swallow. That said, if it works, it actually offers really enjoyable and impressive performance, and its creators seem to be taking an iterative approach to improving the platform through software updates and the like.

Let me be clear, Loona is a fun game, especially for kids, but it can also be frustratingly rough. That said, the projected retail price of $500 is well below the likes of the Aibo.