Nabaztag Wi-Fi rabbits

Last updated: May 23, 2008.

Lots of children dream of owning a pet rabbit, though caring for one is much more of a chore and a responsibility than you might think. Why not take the easy option and plump for a digital pet instead? It doesn't need food and water and you don't have to clean out its cage; far from looking after it, it will look after you by reading out your emails and Web pages, playing your favorite music, and passing on cellphone text messages from your friends!

Photo: A Nabaztag wireless rabbit. Photo by courtesy of Violet.

What is a Wi-Fi rabbit?

Made by Violet and sold under the brand name Nabaztag, electronic rabbits are compact computers with Wi-Fi wireless connections that link to the Internet through your home computer network. It's true that they don't look like computers, but they have input, output, storage, and memory—so computers is officially what they are. (But their input and output is a little bit unconventional, to say the least.)

They have built-in speech synthesizer chips so they can read out messages to you, their ears (operated by electric motors) can wiggle about to attract your attention, LED lights in their body flash on and off, and microphones in their chests respond to your spoken commands. They also have built-in loudspeakers so they can play MP3 music, podcasts, or other streaming media. Even when your computer is switched off, your rabbit can be online and ready to notify you of incoming emails, messages, or Web pages you've asked to be informed about.

In theory, because Nabaztag rabbits are programmable, networked computers in their own right, you could use them for all kinds of different things. The manufacturers have released details of how to program them (something known as the Nabaztag API or Application Programming Interface), so anyone can write new applications for Nabaztag rabbits at any time. It's very easy to write your own rabbit programs once you've mastered the API.

What can you use a rabbit for?

Your rabbit's your personal connection to the online world when you can't be bothered to go near you computer. There are lots of ideas on how you could use him (or her) on Nabaztag's website. You can also see how people are using their rabbits in interesting ways by looking at these photos on Flickr.

Are these things just gadgets? Silly, useless toys? Maybe—but they're making a serious point too by showing us the shape of computers to come. In future, scientists expect computers to operate less like tools that we have to use laboriously and more like autonomous "agents" that we can ask to do things for us. Indeed, the World Wide Web is expected to become much more machine-friendly in future so computers can shuffle through it looking for information all by themselves (this idea is called the Semantic Web). Why sit at a desk booking a hotel room or doing your online shopping when, with a few spoken commands, you could ask your computer to do it all for you? Wi-Fi rabbits may seem frivolous today, but they could be a glimpse of the future—a taste of the computers we'll all be using tomorrow!