Aquaroids Robot Jellyfish

Posted 30 Apr 2001 at 13:21 UTC by steve

Wired has a story about Japanese toy company Takara, who have moved beyond robot dogs in the search for the perfect robot pet. They are now producing robot jellyfish, turtles, fish, and even a prehistoric ammonite that can live in your aquarium. The new robots are called Aquaroids. The robots are solar powered, use proximity sensors to avoid bumping into the glass, and adjust their movement to nearby sounds, such as music.

Aquabot - I want some!, posted 30 Apr 2001 at 18:15 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I saw this article this morning and wanted to post it but my browser choked.

I thought these aqua bots were a cool idea. I was surprised at how much trouble they were, though. It seemes they were supposed to be a no fuss pet, but it turns out you have to do all sorts of things to the aquarium to maintain the bots environment.

I think I like the solar version much better than the battery only version. I think I would get tired of buying batteries and then it would be more like "still-life" aquabot than an animated one. :-)

I think it would be cool to have a few of these things in my pool! (I need a pool first, though). They need different imac colors too! Perhaps some running lights for night time use.

Pretty neat, posted 30 Apr 2001 at 22:32 UTC by josborn » (Journeyer)

It's an interesting challenge to get a water tight robot. I liked the pictures in the article. Seems pretty simple but a lot of online news stories don't have pictures, and in this case, a picture's worth a thousand words.