Word: robotical
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...Blame it on Furby, the furry noisemaker that came out two years ago and sold more than 40 million units. Or Aibo, the $1,500 robot dog that generated 40,000 advance orders in just four weeks last fall. Clearly, robots have profound consumer appeal. "The whole concept of a machine being alive is enthralling," says home-robot inventor Henry Thorne of Probotics, based in Pittsburgh, Pa. "It captures you. It thrills you deep inside." Factor in rapidly falling prices for the cameras, motors, sensors and computer chips, and you've got a trend begging to bust loose...
...this veritable robot zoo, no company is more active than Tiger Electronics. The manufacturer, based in Chicago, is releasing about two dozen robotic toys this year. At its Toy Fair showroom, motorized sea turtles and jellyfish glide through bubbling fish tanks. Miniature mice shake when they're lonely and squeal when they're hungry. A 3-ft.-long Interactive Raptor (still in prototype) is so lifelike, it flinches when you pull its tail...
...cousins got hooked on robot fighting when it became a sort of geek tractor-pull attraction for the San Francisco-area nerdoisie in the mid-'90s. In 1999 they started mounting competitions for pay-per-view. (A similar program, Robot Wars, is a hit in Britain and is rerun on some PBS stations.) They shopped a series to cable networks, and Comedy Central bit, seeing a good fit for its young male audience. (Anyone who argues that demolition isn't comedy has obviously never seen David Letterman drop a watermelon off a six-story building...
...Koreas are getting together. That's pretty amazing. So are the hot new mechanical toys that are supplanting living things. There's The Sims computer game that allows you to create a digital dysfunctional family in case you're dissatisfied with your own. There's Sony's "entertainment robot," AIBO, which looks like the first draft of a dog and exhibits "free will." I myself am inventing an unemotional roller coaster...
...COMIC POTENTIAL Alan Ayckbourn, a British delicacy long underappreciated in the U.S., gets treated right in this deft off-Broadway production of his London hit. Janie Dee is brilliant as a robot actor of the future, in a comedy whose laughs are more than skin deep...