My Keepon, Cute Robot Thing

I first saw him in a textbook, circa early elementary school. A cute robot, one of my favorite things! I tried googling its name, and I must have gotten it slightly wrong because all I got was porn. I quickly closed the browser tab and left my schools library embarrassed and afraid.

I saw him again about 15 years later when, on a lark, I decided to see what Wired's oldest published YouTube video was. It was Keepon, the medical version of My Keepon, dancing to Spoon's Dont You Evah on the streets of Tokyo, accompanied by a guy dressed as a scientist. Catchy song!

I was in a thrift store in Asheville, NC on the 28th of February this year with my girlfriend and my sister. I went over to tell them about a CD I had found when suddenly, I saw him in a display case. My shoulders dropped, as did my jaw. I walked over, calmly, past the parakeets and a woman with a ferret on her shoulders, and stared. He was real, he was right there, and he was 14 dollars. I bought him on the spot, we named him Gray Poupon.

Keepon, from what I can find, was a robot invented by Japanese autism researcher Hideki Kozima. The theory was that the children find interacting with a person too much of a sensory overload, so interacting with a simple robot with limited mannerisms and a static face would be easier. The research Keepon cost around $30,000, and was equipped with cameras in its eyes and a microphone in its face to see and hear the children.

Rather than being autonomous, this Keepon was controlled by a researcher in another room, who could see how the children interacted with its sensors and reacted to its movements. The Wired article doesn't talk with Kozima, but with Marek Michalowski, another researcher who recorded a video of Keepon dancing to a different Spoon song to share with his family in New York. It got uploaded to YouTube, went viral, and inspired the other Spoon video made by Wired.

My Keepon was released first at Toy's-R-Us stores in the US in October 2011. He retailed for $50. I can't find how many My Keepon actually sold, but it was enough to help fund more of the Keepon teams, now going by the name BeatBots, creations. Robots for advertising campaigns and research, their website says. Their website also mentions that portions of each My Keepon sale went towards autism research.

BeatBots did not manufacture My Keepon, but rather licensed the likeness to Wow! Stuff, a british toy company founded in 2006. Some of their recognizable toys include airswimmers (balloons with little propellers you could control,) a line of small plastic tiles with magnets you could connect together to build things, and a bath towel with separate halves labeled 'FACE' and 'BUTT.'

My Keepon lacks the cameras of the research counterpart, but has a microphone in its nose. It has switches in its belly, sides, back, and the top of its head that will detect touch. It's not capacitive, so you really have to poke or squeeze. The robot can adjust its head pitch and roll, as well as the yaw and Y axis of the entire body. His head, for reference, is a little smaller than an orange. That's about what he feels like too, an orange peel. As a kid I always thought he was fuzzy but no, rubbery. Almost like one of those foam dodgeballs they gave us in elementary school that kids would always rip up and bite. Not me though. I never did that.

The BeatBots website mentions that the robot is hackable, with a link to a GitHub page and instructions on how to disassemble but I'm not brave enough to try that.

So, what's the robot like? To power it you need either eight AA batteries, or a wall adapter, 1.5 amps 12 volts center positive. Ours came with some batteries the thrift store put in for testing, but they were almost flat. When the batteries are almost dead the robot will bootloop, repeating its calibration of bowing and raising, then turning counterclockwise accompanied by a series of noises. We thought that was all he did at first, but with a power adapter Gray Poupon came to life.

My Keepon has two play modes, music and touch. In touch mode, which is what the robot defaults to, touching the robot in different places for different times does different things. petting him elicits a squeak for instance, but doing it more than three times gets you a robot beep-boop noise. You can also touch a side and he'll look in that direction, you can confuse him greatly doing this, lots of fun. If you tap his nose the microphone picks it up and he sneezes. From experience he's not the brightest, in that he won't always try and follow a touch that isn't on his facing side, and he's bad at hearing noises.

In music mode My Keepon will bounce along to the tune of a song. With no song playing he tilts left and right to try and listen for a beat. Once the song is playing he'll pause every five or so seconds to make sure it's still playing. He'll also pick on on snapping fingers or clapping as something to dance to, if your tempo is consistent enough, that's what I did to capture this footage.

I've had Gray Poupon for my desk for about a month now, where I wake him up from sleep mode (which you can put him in by holding down both mode buttons or just waiting a minute) and play with him while I write or game. It's an ideal robot pet, since it can be turned off and doesn't need constant attention. it's a great desk toy, but I would worry about giving this to a kid since they may not understand how gentle it is. Its bobbing up and down, as shown in the startup, can also be rather violent, and it took me a while to get used to it without thinking 'oh my god, it's going to tear itself apart.'

Overall, having Gray Poupon has been an incredible experience just because of my lifelong relation with the toy. A forgotten childhood obsession revied, then fulfilled. I love having him, I love looking at him, he's my favorite little guy. If you come across one I highly recommend buying it, it's great fun to play with, and I'm curious how hackable he really is. I imagine there's lots of fun to be had in that regard. Documentation on My Keepon is a little sparse, so take notes, be the scientist Wired Magazine thinks would have one of these.