We had guests yesterday afternoon and I got the digital dog out. Most interesting. One of the people that came has actually had dogs before and started treating the electronic gizmo just like a real one. I've not seen that reaction before. People that treat Digby like a toy usually find that he is very boring. He doesn't always want to do what they want to do, and wanders off and plays by himself some of the time. Just like a real dog.

This has quite encouraged me about the development of devices like this. If a (by today's standards at least) fairly low level of computer performance can get this response the real digital companion cannot be far away. From what I've seen the challanges are mainly mechanical, in that I don't think that Digby's joints and motors are suitable for long term deployment. But once they get that side sorted a proper robot dog/cat can not be far away.