To keep the peace at home, Keith Hearn had to scold his new robotic vacuum cleaner.
The trouble started when Mr. Hearn first turned on his Roomba automatic cleaner. When the device started scooting around the floor, Mr. Hearn's dog, Argos, attacked it.
Seeking help, Mr. Hearn found an online forum dedicated to the hundred-dollar Roomba buzzing with similar stories of pet assailants. Owners were offering advice. Among the most popular: Chastise the vacuum in front of the dog. WSJ's Adam Najberg reports that dogs exhibit a curious dislike for technology, which they often attack. Watch as he negotiates a truce between Sunshine, a Heinz 57 hound, and a Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner.
And so, with Argos looking on, Mr. Hearn shook his finger at his gadget and sternly called it "a bad Roomba." Argos appeared to be mollified. "After that, he never tried nipping at it again," says Mr. Hearn, a software engineer in San Carlos, Calif.
Such hijinks have found a place on YouTube, where robots and pets face off on camera. In January, Rob Sheridan, 28, posted a video titled "Puppy vs. Robot! Epic Battle for Territorial Domination!" It features a new Roboquad, a crablike robot toy with adjustable "aggression" settings made by WowWee, and an excited Lola, Mr. Sheridan's two-year-old Chihuahua-terrier mix.
"The first time I turned on the Roboquad, she went nuts," says Mr. Sheridan, a graphic designer in Los Angeles. "She would bark at it like crazy."
The video has been viewed more than two million times. "Now she's come to recognize Roboquad as just another thing in the house she can safely ignore, like the TV," he says.
Animal-rights groups aren't fans of these videos but stop short of calling them cruel. According to Daphna Nachminovitch of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, introducing robots into a pet household should be done with care. "There's no way to explain to them that this is not a threat," she says. [robopets] Stephanie Kesler Stephanie Kesler's new Pleo robot toy inspects her four-year-old, 100-pound Bouvier, Tyge.
Sympathetic owners sometimes just retire their new purchases. In other cases, the pets take matters into their own paws. Peter Haney, a university administrator in Lethbridge, Alberta, twice found his Roomba in pieces after letting it clean while his flat-coated retrievers, Macleod and Tima, had the run of the house. "No one is talking," he says.
Craig Capizzi, who runs RoombaReview.com from his Staten Island, N.Y., home, says his Yorkshire terrier, Candie, ignores his Roomba but is scared of his new Pleo, a dinosaur-like robot made by Ugobe Inc. "She's terrified of it. She bites it," he says. "That dog really believes it's another animal and, apparently, a frightening animal." He sent Pleo home with his fiancée's mother, who "fell in love with it and treats it like a pet," he says. |