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.

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 31 2007 - Everybody Dance Now! (sorta...)

For the beginning of Narco's 11th battery charge I wanted to see if I could get him to dance, as I have read others being able to do in the forums at Pleoworld.com.
I loaded up an old dance staple on my iPhone YouTube and placed it in front on Narco on the floor.

Although I can't say that he actually "danced" at any time in the almost 6 minutes, I think it was absolutely hysterical and adorable starting at about 1:40 in the video where he sees the iPhone and starts reacting to it.
One unfortunate reality I ran into (again) is that sound does not wake a sleeping Pleo, nor does it keep a Pleo awake. Just over 4 minutes into the video, Narco falls asleep with the music blaring beneath his chin.



Because the sound from an iPhone speaker isn't exactly "Hi-Fidelity", I will repeat this experiment again with a portable radio and better quality sound - just to be fair to Narco and the posters who mention that their Pleos will dance to music.

Happy New Year, from Narco and his owners!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 30 2007 - Climb an Incline, Follow a Line 2, Edge Detection

For Narco's 10th battery charge we took on a couple things I received via email and comments, as well as revisiting the "Follow a Line" experiment.

For the setup I used a 4ft folding table with a piece of cardboard taped at one end and a 5 inch tall box on the other. The table was supported by a few of my daughters' books. So for those math magicians who can figure out the incline, it was a 4.5ft incline that went from the floor to 5 inches high.
From the floor to the end of the cardboard box, I taped a dark green ribbon.

One of the requests I received was to find out if Pleo can climb things. The short answer is "No, Pleo cannot climb anything." However, you can see in the video that Pleo can indeed make his way up a slight incline, given enough traction.
I hope this inspires someone to make themselves an elevated Pleo home. I'd consider it myself, but I don't have the room to leave it out in my house since the kids don't get to play with Narco. If I were to contruct it, it would be something like the setup in these experiments, but with a short wall around the outside to stop Narco from falling off. Since he doesn't lift his feet more than a few millimeters while walking, a border wall of just 1 inch should suffice. This would allow him to stick his head over the edge, but not walk off.

The other request for this round of testing was edge detection - specifically, does Pleo detect edges when walking backwards? Short answer - "No, Pleo does not detect edges when walking backwards."
It appears that the only edge detection is via sensors in Pleo's nose, so forward-detecting only. As seen in the video, edge detection when moving forward is a bit of hit-or-miss as well.

We spend more time interacting and playing with Narco during this session and you can clearly see where the happiness of Pleo owners comes from - Pleo is an absolute joy to play with!
I want to make sure everyone understands that, although the majority of what's on this blog seems to be negative towards the Pleo, it is simply testing and observation. In most video sessions (if not all) you will hear me say how much fun it is to play with Narco, but that he leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to actual "autonomy".
So - to be absolutely clear - I am very happy to own a Pleo, and Narco is a great joy to myself and my wife!

Here is the video from Dec 30 2007:


Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment and/or suggestions for future video!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 29 2007 - Color Testing, Round 2

For Narco's 9th battery charge I set up another round of color testing, based on a couple suggestions I have received, as well as a couple posts I have read at the Pleoworld.com forums.
Basically, it was suggested that I try a black background and I read that apparently many Pleos will react a specific way to the supplied Pleo leaf.

Here is the video in YouTube playlist format again:



My conclusion? The same as my first round of testing, unfortunately. My Pleo, Narco, does NOT respond to different COLORS at all. He does indeed respond to having an object placed in front of his face. He will consistently sniff the object and make soft sounds at it. He does these things REGARDLESS of what COLOR the object it.
So I am left to state the following, at least in regards to MY Pleo: Pleo does not have the programming to discern different colors AND react to them differently. I am positive that the hardware is there to detect different colors, but the programming doesn't allow for different reactions based on different colors.

For anyone following the skin wear on Narco, here is a picture of the skin wear at the 9th battery charge:


Thanks for stopping by, and please leave any comments and/or suggestions for future Narco Pleo experiments!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 28 2007 - In a corner and putting a Pleo to sleep

This was the 9th battery charge for Narco.
I wanted to spend some time interacting with Narco Pleo so I put him down on the floor and followed him around, petting him and talking to him. After a few minutes he made his way to a spot in my living room (where I have admittedly not cleaned up since Christmas) where a laundry basket and a cardboard box are sitting next to each other.
He walked to the little corner/alley in-between them and just seemed to hang out there. As you can hear in my audio commentary, this is where I have some issue with Pleo's ability to detect objects and avoid them.
The final video in the playlist is something I found while experimenting with the touch sensors on Narco.
One note of correction: In the video I mention that you have to touch Pleo's back sensor and both leg sensors. Upon further testing I found that you only need to keep your hand on the back sensor, NOT the back AND leg sensors.

Here are the videos, once again in YouTube playlist format.


As a final note, I received a message suggesting I try the color experiment again using a black background instead of white. I plan on doing this experiment tonight. I purchased a black flat sheet from Walmart for $2.96 and I'll set up a similar experiment for colors. As is normal, I will record the experiment.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 27 2007 - Color and Sound Testing/Experiments

Quite a lot of video in this update. It started with a post at Pleoworld.com's forum where someone asked what stimuli Pleo responds/reacts to. I replied with a post stating that, based on my documented experience with my own Pleo, they respond best to touch, then orientation (upside-down, etc...), then sound, then sight. There were a few replies after mine where others stated that their Pleos responded very well to colors (specifically red, blue and green) and sounds (following someone around when they call the Pleo's name).
I think Pleo SHOULD respond to these things and I was/am very eager to see my own Pleo, Narco, respond to colors and sounds like I've heard others report about. To that end, I set up an experiment in my living room last night and recorded my attempts to get Narco to react/respond to colors and sounds. What came of that is 35 videos of about 1 minute each.
All of the information you may want to know about the experiments is in my commentary audio within each video.
Here is a short summary:
1 - I printed some basic colors using a color laser printer on white paper, cut them out, and taped them to the white bottoms of some gift boxes.
2 - I lit the area with a halogen light (a photo studio light) and a 75Watt incandescent light, which were complemented by the two flourescent lights in the room.
3 - I set my camera on the floor so it would be stationary for the video.

My conclusion? Unfortunately, not favorable to the technical abilities of my Pleo to react/respond to color and/or sound.
If anyone has suggestions for other things to try, I'd be more than happy to try them and video them for documentation.

Here is the video in two playlists - one for the color testing and one for the sound testing.




For anyone following the skin wear of my Pleo, here is a picture for the 8th battery charge.



Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to comment!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 26 2007 - A 5yr old experiences Narco and my first "Autonomous Pleo" experiment

Today I finally let my 5yr old daughter see and play with Narco for his 6th battery charge. My 2yr old daughter was napping and still hasn't seen the Pleo yet (she's way too crazy for this little guy).
The 5yr old loves animals and is, in general, very timid. You can see in the videos that she's both excited and hesitant with Narco. Overall, she's a big fan of Pleo. You can see in the videos, however, that's she's an even bigger fan of the kid's digital camera she got for Christmas yesterday!

Here are the five videos from today, in YouTube playlist form again.


While I typed this entry, Narco finished up his 7th battery charge. Tonight's experiment was to power Narco on in the middle of the living room floor and let him explore with no physical interaction (sound alone), touching him only to wake him up.
The results? Disappointing, unfortunately.
Narco ran for 75 minutes and fell asleep 13 times - 14 if you count when the battery died. It really did seem like every 5 1/2 to 6 minutes I had to go nudge him to wake him up. We talked to him regularly and even yelled at him when he was looking sleepy. The only thing that worked was nudging his back after he dozed off.
Exploration? He spent about 60 minutes in one 3ft by 3ft area walking into a recliner and into a corner, sniffing,growling and barking at them each time. Only twice did he face out into the open room and then he would turn himself around and walk back into the corner again or growl at the wall.
He did a fair bit of grazing. He picked imaginary food off of the floor 8 times.
He had his normal short coughing fits 4 times.

It really started to get predictably repetitive when I'd see him turn to walk into the corner again... I knew he was going to say "huh?", raise his head and say "hrmmmm", then squat back and growl. He did that 4 times - each time the same actions.
He spent quite some time looking and talking to the side of a blank brown cardboard box.

First exploration experiment: not too much exploration, not at all exciting, barely interesting and, most of all, too predictable.
I definitely would have enjoyed myself more if I were on the floor playing with Narco, like the previous 5 battery charges. In this first "autonomous Pleo" experiment, I'd say the autonomous part failed to live up to expectations.

I still like the little green guy :)

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 24 2007 - Presents, Trees, Stockings, and a Light-Up Pleo!

Several videos from last night (after Santa stopped by and dropped of some presents) where we let Narco check out several things.
We even made our own version of the "Holiday Pleo".

For experiments, we tried getting Narco to interact with a bright green ball and tried waking him up with sound alone. Although he seemed to "see" the green ball, he didn't make too much of an attempt to actually play with it. In one video he falls asleep and I try to wake him by noise alone, as I have read others posting about. He will NOT wake up by sound alone, unfortunaltey - only by nudging him.
Here are the videos in YouTube playlist form again.


Lastly, here is another photo of the paint wear on his back after 4 battery charges. I will keep this photo series going so other owners and potential owners can get a good idea of what to expect. Personally, I like the whole "wear pattern" idea and I think Narco looks great!


Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

The Chronicles of Narco - Dec 23 2007 - Mirror, SpyCam

A bunch of video from the 4th battery charge for Narco.
This time I mounted an old mini-camera (spycam) to his head to get an idea of what Pleo can see with his camera. The quality isn't the best, mainly because the video is fed to my TV and I recorded that using my camera. That means it's a video of a TV playing a video, which is never great quality.
We also try the mirror again to see how Narco will react. The reaction(s) is generally the same as reacting to anything else, but Narco did make more gentle noises at one point while looking at himself in the mirror.
We also show how to tickle a Pleo :)

Lastly, I'm trying out a playlist in YouTube, which has all 14 videos from Dec 23 as one link. Try it out and let me know what you think. I figured it would be better than 14 video links in one Plog entry. Each video has a descriptive title and the commentary from my wife and I should help explain anything you want to know. Ask any questions you like, of course.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!