SLI Practical Group B Tail-Wag

Project Definition

Possible features that could be supported in our application were canvassed among the whole of group B. Suggestions included:

  • Camera

    This could be used in two ways -

    1. Feeding a video stream back to the user via the WWW.

    2. Local Image Recognition - software on the robot could recognise shapes such as a ball that could then affect the 'mood' of the pet or stimulate responses such as to follow the ball.

  • Speaker

    This would allow the robot pet to play sounds. These sounds could come from two potential sources:

    1. Sound Archive

      This would store various sounds such as barks and growls.An additional feature would be the ability to download sounds over the bluetooth link that could update the sound archive.

    2. Text to Speech Engine

      A software text to speech engine could run on the robot pet to 'speak' messages it either generated itself or that were sent to it over the bluetooth link.

  • Microphone and Voice Recognition Engine

    A microphone and Voice recognition system could be incorporated on the robot to allow a degree of direct interaction.

  • Basic Navigation

    A system that recorded its movements relative to its previous positions, so that on various stimuli it could return to base, and possibly avoid objects it had learned about.

  • WAP interface

    A WAP interface would allow greater access to the control interface, especially if the control commands are relatively low bandwidth.

  • SMS messaging

    The robot pet could call the base station to send an SMS message to the user when it was in a certain 'mood' for example if it was hungry or in playful.

  • Lifelike random movement

    The robot pet should move pseudo-randomly and not in direct straight lines. I.E. it should move like a dog and not like a lego robot.

  • Bluetooth pico-net Awareness

    The robot is a bluetooth device that can move around so at times it may come within range of new bluetooth devices. It should be able to interact with these devices (if they accept a connection of course). An example would be that if a robot pet was playful and was in a room with a bluetooth aware TV or Games platform the pet could oppen a connection to one of them and attempt to get the user to play with it.

Dave Harding.