There's a growing fear that artificial intelligence combined with robotics[1] will displace the value of humans in many contexts. But could these trends also apply to our traditional four-legged canine and feline companions? After its splash at CES 2020, I had an opportunity to get up close this week with two prototypes of the MarsCat robot developed by Elephant Robotics. The mechanical meower took one small step forward for robotkind... and promptly tipped over. That would have been the low point had another of the litter not also fallen over later in the demonstration, with its leg breaking off in the process.
Even when the robots were not showing off their far-from-feline agility, they emitted loud gear noises and moved as you might expect a robot cat to move. Fluffy's role in society is safe for now. But not necessarily indefinitely.
Built on the Raspberry Pi platform and launched on Kickstarter, the MarsCat is the pet project of Joey Song, who has long been a fan of Sony's Aibo robotic dog but dismayed at its high price. (Song said he picked a used one up for $2,000 a few years ago.) With Mars Cat, Song says he's hoping to bring down the price of such a pet (the launch price is $699) while also speeding up the pace of innovation. At launch, the MarsCat will support detecting brightness and moving objects, attributes that Aibo cannot sense.
Still, MarsCat clearly takes visual inspiration from Aibo in that its body is smooth plastic as opposed to Hasbro's FurReal toy pets. He notes that, when they tried out fur, it made the catbots scarier. For now, it's practically cuddly compared to Nybble[2], another open-source feline bot that raised over $300,000 on Indiegogo last year. Song says that