Speaker 1: Meet Rocky, the smartphone controlled robot that keeps your furry friend company, even when you're not home. Hi, I'm Logan. And this is Luna. Luna has gotten pretty used to me working from home, but at some point I may not get to hang out with her all day. That's why I'm excited to try Rocky, to see how she'll react to it. Will she bond with it or will she try to break it open for all the tasty treats inside first, let's open up the box and see what's inside now. [00:00:30] Rocky retails for $249. I know that sounds expensive for a pet toy, but some might find it worth it, open it up. So we've got the user manual and this little toy attachment just popped up. There's cats all over this box, but I've been assured that this also works for dogs. So fingers crossed. This looks like a cat toy though.
Speaker 1: Of course I have our user manual. This looks like the laser pointer attachment. I've [00:01:00] never actually played with Luna using a laser pointer. So I'm really excited to see how that works out. Hey, let's get Rocky out of his cage. Here we go. Here's Rocky. You have your four omnidirectional wheel. So Rocky can turn around in place without needing too much space around him. In the front. You have an HD camera and a, a light below that you have a microphone and on top of a speaker for two-way communication with your pet below, that is the snack dispenser where those [00:01:30] tasty treats will come out. This is how we're gonna bribe Luna to start playing with Rocky. She's become pretty indifferent to my robot vacuums, but I think the treats are really gonna sell her on this device. And on the back, you have a couple status line that USBC charging port and our power button. Oh, I almost forgot. First let's attach the laser pointer. All right. We got our little alien probe on top for pointing laser. Now, apparently using the app, this, you can make this move left [00:02:00] and right. So we'll definitely try that out. Um, line. Hi there. It's got a little less than half battery, so we're not gonna get too into it just yet, but let's just roll it around the table and see how easy it is to control.
Speaker 1: Very easy to control. You've played a mobile game. Those controls are very similar. You got your, your movement on the left. Oh, that's it new? [00:02:30] Have a stray, right. And left. No stop. Let's roll it off the edge. I'm still not sure what the right controls do. They don't seem to do anything other than left and right, but it's not like pushing up or are down on the right. Controls is making it look up or down like you would in a video game, the laser pointer turns off and goes into a sort of standby mode until you touch the screen, then it's back on. And yeah, it looks like I can point it towards the ground, which I might do, but let me just angle it just [00:03:00] out of the way of the camera. That's better now, before we start annoying Luna, I'm going to plug it in and make sure it has a full charge. According to the instructions that can take four to five hours. But supposedly this battery can last several days, depending on how much you play with it. It has 30 days of standby time, but it recommends that you charge it every seven. Make sure that it's ready to roll when you are.
Speaker 1: Rocky's fully charged. Now let's get it loaded with some tasty treats. You just gotta push two buttons on the side here, and the top comes [00:03:30] off. And as you can see, there are 15 chambers for loading treats into you should load Rocky with solid treats or food. I'm gonna be using these little training treats. So Luna can have multiple of them. Just put one in each of the 15 chambers we're fully loaded. Now let's put the top back on. Nice and secure. All right, let's go play with Luna. Gonna get it powered on, got some red light, gonna put it next to Luna's other toys [00:04:00] right there. Now let's connect the app and see what she thinks.
Speaker 2: Hi Luna. You want a tree
Speaker 3: Set?
Speaker 2: She's sniffing it. She's not too scared of it. Gonna a tree [00:04:30] Says the tree has been dispensed. There it is.
Speaker 3: Sound it.
Speaker 2: How make she saw it come from from the to let's try again. Dispensing treat. Oh, two of them. That's not fair.
Speaker 3: [00:05:00] Okay. Playing with it.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for Linda to warm up to Rocky. And now that she knows it has treats, she's kind of obsessed and won't let it out of her site. Let's see what happens when I leave home and use Rocky to play with Luna. Okay. It's been about 20 minutes since I left. So [00:05:30] Luna has likely accepted that I'm gone and has probably moved on with her day. I did notice that pretty much. As soon as I left, she started barking at Rocky and tried to get some treats out of it. So that does have me a little concern. All right. Connected and ready. Here we go. Oh, Luna's already trying to play with me. Hello Luna. Okay. Let's [00:06:00] come out and play. Come over here. Luna. Let's get her to go on the carpet. Cuz she likes to do tricks on the carpet. Luna sit Luna, sit. She's having trouble accepting commands from a robot. Luna. Sit, sit. No sit. [00:06:30] No I'm concerned that that laser's gonna blind her. I'm just gonna attack her every time she doesn't do what I want. Hey, sit, sit, Get her, get her, get her. Okay. Luna. Sit
Speaker 3: Luna, sit, sit.
Speaker 1: Good girl. Very cheap for that one. [00:07:00] It's fun to watch her. Get a treat. Lie down, lie down. Come on, Linda, lie down.
Speaker 3: You can do it. The girl lie down, light out the girl
Speaker 1: Light out.
Speaker 3: Good girl.
Speaker 1: Let's dispense the treat [00:07:30] Right back to the toy bin. Okay. Luna, thank you for playing with us. Here's one last treat.
Speaker 1: To be honest, my expectations for how well Rocky would work when I was away from home were pretty low, but I'm extremely impressed with how low the latency was. When I was playing with Luna from the park I experienced about this same delay between [00:08:00] the controls and movements as I did while in the same room as the device, which is to say very little at all. Granted that probably speaks more to the 5g network I was on than anything else. Because when I was on slower networks, it was pretty much unusable. So if you're still waiting for 5g in your area, you might have to wait to buy something like this. Other than that, Rocky works really well. Overall. It's able to handle pretty much every surface in my home, including some large bumps where the flooring changes between rooms, the camera automatically [00:08:30] switches to night mode when needed, making it easy to see in any lighting conditions. And the speaker is clear enough for Luna to understand commands. Even if it took her a little time to figure out you can also use the Rocky app to take stills and record 32nd clips. Here's what the video and audio quality of those clips are like
Speaker 1: Rocky [00:09:00] isn't perfect though. There was one or two times when Luna was able to knock it over, leaving it, unable to recover. She also gets a little too excited about it and scratches up the floor around Rocky. I have to put it away when we're home and sneak it out where she won't it. When we plan on using it, this makes for a nice surprise for Luna, but takes the spontaneity away, which got me thinking who really benefits from a device like Rocky. I mean, sure. It's a good time chasing your pet down with the treat dispensing robot while you're not home, but are the animals having [00:09:30] as much fun as the humans or am I addicting my dog to technology? I with Dr. Melissa Bain, a professor of clinical animal behavior at UC Davis school of veterinary medicine, to find out more about what our pets might think and feel when their humans leave home.
Speaker 4: We do see a lot of animals that may not care that the owners are gone, but we do see in, in our service animals that get very panicked when the owner to go to work. And it's obviously an irrational fear because the owners do come home. [00:10:00] But especially during this pandemic where owners have been home for long periods of time, this is a big change for a lot of our pets
Speaker 1: Do compan devices like Rocky, um, that are designed to allow you to interact with your pets while you're way. Do are those good solutions for stimulating or entertaining your pet?
Speaker 4: So if we look at pets of two different, uh, viewpoints, one is the dogs who are slightly bored or slightly, uh, kind of under stimulated. And then we have the animals that are panicked for those dogs that are truly panicked. I'm not sure how much this [00:10:30] will help those dogs for those dogs. We do suggest talking with through veterinarian or veterinary behaviorists to talk about ways to help their animal, not panic. However, for, for those dogs that don't have that this is an amazing way to help prevent that from occurring because the dog starts associating every time my own her goes. And I get my very tasty treats that I never get any other time. It can help stem the tie to separation anxiety.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate that a device like raw may not be the best solution for the animals that need [00:11:00] the most help with their anxiety. But I am relieved to learn. It's not harming Luna and she's likely even enjoying herself. Dr. Bain said, we can only assume cats experience the same emotional changes as dogs when their humans leave home. So the same recommendations apply to them. However, there is one feature of rock key that I was surprised to learn may actually cause harm. Particularly in dogs,
Speaker 4: We very strongly recommend against using laser pointers with dogs. Some dogs can develop an over attachment to these, these light [00:11:30] things and be, uh, develop into light or shadow chasing behaviors, which are, uh, very difficult to get rid of. And we so strongly seek to us not using laser pointers.
Speaker 1: Is it safer for some, for like cats though?
Speaker 4: So there is a study that was just published, looking at laser pointers use with cats and cats that, uh, owners would play with their cats. With laser pointers actually started developing these, uh, repetitive behaviors as well. So if owners play with laser pointers with their cats, we always [00:12:00] suggest to follow it with some sort of food because it's a predatory type behavior. So they chase the laser pointer and it's very frustrating if they never catch
Speaker 1: Anything. Well, I'm glad I already removed the laser because Luna was chewing on it and I was worried it would accidentally blind her, but now I'm just left with a $250 treat dispenser that moves. That's great for tracking down your pet if they're in another room, but if it's like Luna and just sleeps in the same room while you're away, you could probably save yourself a hundred dollars with one of the many cameras that dispense treats. Personally, [00:12:30] I don't even bother with a treat dispenser and just use a $35 wise cam to check in on Luna. They're not a sponsor of this video, but are highly recommended by our smart home experts, which is why I bought one. And it works great. If you do want more videos on treat dispensers or other devices for your pets, please give this video a nice thumbs up to let us know you enjoyed it. Big thanks to Luna for being such a good girl. Feel free to leave your praise for her down in the comments below. And I will relay them all to her. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
