The Toys division at SEGA, which also deals in video game publishing, and Activision have announced that they are working together to create a toy robot dog called Wappy Dog, which will be controlled using a video game for the Nintendo DS handheld.
Wappy Dog will be able to respond to 18 vocal commands that players will speak into the microphone of the
Nintendo DS and there are 350 ways that the robot can respond to the commands and to environmental cues.
The creators of Wappy Dog are describing the reactions as being able to evolve depending on past history with a player.
The robot can bark, dance and sing and all his actions can be translated by the Nintendo DS accompanying game for the player.
The handheld game includes a number of mini games, some of them cooperative and some competitive, that involved the dog and Wappy will be able to react to both success and failure in real time.
When a player is away from the Wappy Dog robot he can still play the DS games and the device will focus when it's in range again.
David Oxford, an executive working for the
Activision Publishing division, has stated, “We were excited about Wappy Dog from the moment we saw it. This one-of-a-kind toy and video game combines a strong emotional bond and exciting virtual experience with the interaction of a physical pet.”
Neither SEGA nor Activision said exactly when the Wappy Dog combo will be released to interested players.
The robot and video game concept is probably more seen as a testing bed for a number of technologies that could then be included in other video games, perhaps leading to more integration between robotic devices and handheld video games.
Both Nintendo and Sony have previously experimented with robots like the AIBO and the various companions for the Pokemon games.
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