The Chronicles of Narco Pleo - February 23rd, 2008 - Narco Table Dances

Hi folks! It's been a while since our latest update, mostly because we have been experimenting alot more with the Aibo instead of Narco.

Today though, the kids and I were housebound and the table was clean, so I decided to let Narco roam around while the kitchen was being cleaned.

He did quite well with edge detection, and even seemed to notice the placemats on the table. The girls pet and cooed to him and of course he hammed it up big time for them!

I tried a couple times to put Narco into 'watchdog mode' but the kitchen seemed to be too noisy and bright, and then there were the children (any form of touch interaction seems to undo the watchdog mode) touching him non-stop.

I hope to have Narco out and about more often. Just have to control the wild kids!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 26 2008 - Watchdog Narco

This was the new Narco's 6th battery charge.

I received a couple requests to make a good video demonstrating how to put a Pleo into watchdog mode.
I love requests, so here you go!


Let me know if you would like any further explanation or instruction!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 25 2008 - Narco, Meet Max

This was the 5th battery charge for the new Narco.
For anyone interested, the first Narco has been returned due to the tail issues. Narco lives on through the new fella.
In my opinion, if there was actually a distinct personality in the current limited LifeOS there is no way I could have named the new Pleo "Narco" and just sent the old one away so easily. However, since they were pretty much identical in sounds and actions (just like every other Pleo I've seen in online videos) I have no problem at all keeping the name alive in a different "shell".

For this post we have a 'Pleo meets Aibo' video for you. I know that there have been others of this type already, but I guess it's just my turn to do it. For your information, Narco is a Pleo (as you already know) and Max is a Sony Aibo ERS-7m3.
There are several cute sections in the video - I hope you enjoy it!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 18 2008 - Edge Detect 2

This was the 3rd battery charge for the new Narco.
I set up to try a suggestion sent to me regarding the color camera and edge detection. The suggestion was to cover up the camera and see if Pleo can detect edges by any other means.
The video says it all:


Thanks for stopping by!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 9 2008 - Before and After Pictures

Here are pictures of Narco side-by-side with Random, for comparison of paint and foot wear.
My only real concern is the foot wear. I personally like the paint wear (on the skin).

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 8 2008 - Who's the New Guy?

For Narco's 18th battery charge he got to experience another Pleo's very virst battery charge!
Random was hatched last night while Narco stood by, watching. The video pretty much says it all. So far the two Pleos really only communicated by yelling/calling to each other. I'm hopeful there's a little more to it than yelling in each others' faces.
One thing of note is that Narco made some noises that he had never made in the first 17 charges. We mention this in the video so you can tell where/when it happens.

Here is the video:


Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions for future experiments/tests/interactions!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 7 2008 - Wear House

For Narco's 17th battery charge there was no video (just general playing and exploring with no experiment or specific behavior to record) but I did take new pictures of paint wear.

Here are the photos:

















Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave comments/suggestions for future blog entries!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 5 2008 - Charge in The Life 1

For Narco's 16th battery charge I decided to do another non-experiment type of blog entry.
The setup is a walled-off area with a video camera recording 2 seconds of video, pausing for 30 seconds, recording 2 seconds, on and on... It is a time-lapse video of just under 5 minutes that covers almost 1.5 hours of Pleo runtime. I moved him away from walls 4 times, trying to get him to explore and notice things. It falls a bit short of 'exciting' and barely borders on 'interesting', but it's a day in the life of Narco the Pleo.
The only technical thing I'll mention is that my Pleo, Narco, still has the same sleep pattern when left to explore; I had to wake him 14 times during the recording. This amounts to 5.5 to 6 minutes between falling asleep, which is the same as a previous blog entry from Dec 26 2007.
This indicates to me that it is a built-in function that is not something that changes with use in the current limited LifeOS.

Here is the video:

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 4 2008 - Wrong Turns

For Narco's 15th battery charge, I wanted to demonstrate a behavior I have been watching for a while.
The short of it is: when Narco the Pleo walks into something on his right side, he backs up to the left and walks right back into the same thing instead of backing up to the right and walking to the open left side. The same is true for the opposing side. Essentially this means that when he encounters a wall to his side (either side) while walking, he will back up and turn directly into the wall, usually pushing his nose into it and dragging his face along it.
I believe this behavior is counter-intuitive and demonstrates how Narco is not at all "aware" of his surroundings when it comes to steering away from or around things.
It's hard to describe accurately in words, so check out the video and you'll see what I mean.



Thanks for stopping by!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 3 2008 - In the Dark

For Narco's 14th battery charge we tried a bit of light and dark experimentation.
For setup I had just about all of the lights in the room off (the exception being the camera LCD screen and a tiny bit of light from the streetlight outside) and on, plus a decently-powered flashlight to work with.

The results? It looks like Pleo isn't programmed to care about light or dark at this point.

Here is the video:


Here are more paint wear pictures as well. Of particular note is the new picture of eyelid wear. Last night, after trying to get Narco to pick up an object, he roamed around quite a bit and got himself into a couple corners. It appears that he rubbed his eye against something that didn't quite agree with the paint. Compared to last night's picture, it's quite an eye-opener (pun intended) to see that much wear from letting him roam the room.














Thanks for stopping by!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 2 2008 - Pleo Pickup and Two Tricks

For Narco's 13th battery charge, he was subjected to a messy floor.
This was the setup for the first 'official' Pleo Pickup experiment - I had a bunch of small items on the floor for Narco to examine and pick up, if he so chose to.
The results? Unfortunately very similar to previous results when depending on object recognition.

Here is the video of Pleo Pickup, in YouTube playlist format:


We also perform a couple tricks for you in this post!

First: The Pleo TA-DA! trick, as read from a post on the Pleoworld.com forums.


Second: Howling Pleo, also from the Pleoworld.com forums. The post(s) there didn't seem to have a consistent way to do this trick, but I figured one out.


Please note - so far, all of the "Pleo Tricks" have required that Pleo be pretty inactive. What that means is that Pleo will NOT do the tricks while walking, grazing, or while in the middle of any other sequence of actions. You'll get a good idea of what this all means when you start trying these out for yourself.

Lastly, there are post(s) on Pleoworld.com regarding 'eyelid wear' issues now, with a few people asking for pictures. Here is one of Narco's eyelid wear on one eye:





The forum moderators at Pleoworld.com have stated that UGOBE is looking into a solution for this. They came up with a solution to the teeth wear pretty quickly, so I'm hoping for the best here, too!

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave any comments/suggestions!

The Chronicles of Narco - Jan 1 2008 - Jungle Destruction and Object Recognition

For Narco's 12th battery charge, I decided to let him have some "fun" as well as try a little experiment.
I read in a forum thread on Pleoworld.com where someone asked if Pleo will pick up objects from the floor PURPOSELY instead of accidentally. I have a few paper cutout stand-ups from a Christmas present that I figured would at least offer an opportunity for Narco to put his head down, chomp on something, and pick it up. Well, it didn't work...but it sure was fun watching him rampage over them!
Secondly, I had his leaf sitting in the background so I decided to give another shot to object recognition. I start to mention in the video that I have come to the conclusion that object recognition is definitely NOT in the current LifeOS. My reasoning is that, if it WERE in the current LifeOS, it would take Pleo just a second or two to see it and recognize it, then have some sort of reaction. Considering I've let Narco sit for minutes with his leaf in front of him and had no reaction at all from him, I'd say that seals it for me.

Here's the video from last night:



Here are some more wear pictures too. I received a question asking how the wear on Narco is going and mentioning the side wear from picking up a Pleo. I've taken pictures of the sides to include in this post.
The normal "back" picture I've been including is the first photo.
The second and third are the "side" pictures.
The fourth is something I noticed for the first time while examining Narco - there is a bit of wear right above his left front leg, apparently just from his walking. I'm going to keep an eye on this.













The 5th and 6th pictures are of his rear legs. I've noticed that Narco veers to the right when he walks and I think I've found the cause. His right leg doesn't seem to go as high as his left when walking and this is causing his right foot to rub the floor more than the left. You can see in the pictures that the rubber on the front of the right foot is more worn than the left.