In 2005 robotics companies found a niche that they may not have expected would take off as it did with such intensity. Robotic Pets became one of those market niches. In Japan, consumer are lining up to get their very own new robotic pet. Apparently we are seeing the American Consumer is also very interested in Robotic Toy pets for their children as they do not take much extra care and the kids really like them. The parents like them too. Many of these robotic pets are capable of fetching the paper and other silly things. Some of the newest versions in 2005 at the Tokyo Robotics Expo were WiFi wireless units, would guard your house while you were away, even take a digital picture of the intruders, mailman or delivery people and send it wirelessly to your home computer which would email you while at work? We will see these trends continue and even one company already stated that their latest robotic dog would mop the floor rather than pee on it while you were away and could send real time live video feed to your mobile PDA or cell phone. You can expect that the prices of robotic pets will come down to the price of the iRobot vacuums and that whatever the consumer demands the engineers of these robotic animals will design and have to market within the year. Think on this in 2006. |
