engineering

Nabaztag

Nabaztag is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nabaztag rather than just read about it. In short: Nabaztag (Armenian for "hare", նապաստակ (napastak)) is a Wi-Fi enabled ambient electronic device in the shape of a rabbit, invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével, and manufactured by the company Violet. Nabaztag was designed to be a "smart object" comparable to those manufactured by Ambient Devices; it can connect to the Internet (to download weather forecasts, read its owner's email, etc.).

Key takeaways

Nabaztag belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nabaztag to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nabaztag from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nabaztag (Armenian for "hare", նապաստակ (napastak)) is a Wi-Fi enabled ambient electronic device in the shape of a rabbit, invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével, and manufactured by the company Violet. Nabaztag was designed to be a "smart object" comparable to those manufactured by Ambient Devices; it can connect to the Internet (to download weather forecasts, read its owner's email, etc.). It is also customizable and programmable to an extent. Sylvain Huet developed most of the embedded code of all Violet objects. Sebastien Bourdeauducq developed the Wi-Fi driver. Antoine Schmitt has been their behavior designer and Jean-Jacques Birgé their sound designer (together they have also composed Nabaz'mob, an opera for 100 Nabaztag). Maÿlis Puyfaucher (who features its French voice) wrote all the original texts pronounced by the rabbit. On 20 October 2009, following a long period of technical difficulties that ultimately led to Violet's bankruptcy, Mindscape purchased Violet. In October 2010, Mindscape announced a third generation Nabaztag, called "Karotz". Karotz was released April 2012. On 27 July 2011, Mindscape stopped the maintenance of the Nabaztag and released its source code. On 23 December 2011, it was announced that the Nabaztag rabbits would be "coming back to life" on 24 December 2011 at midnight via email to those with Violet accounts. The required server service at Nabaztag.com has since stopped functioning, but other options exist including setting up a server using OpenNab software or installing NabaztagLives on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer.

Features Out of the box, the Nabaztag rabbit is 23 cm (9 in) in height and weighs 418 g (14.7 oz). It can send and receive MP3s and messages that are read out loud as well as perform the following services (by either speaking the information out loud or using indicative lights): weather forecast, stock market report, news headlines, alarm clock, e-mail alerts, RSS-Feeds, MP3-Streams and others. There is an API, with bindings for multiple programming languages including Java, Perl, Python, or PHP, available to program the Nabaztag. At first speaking only in English and French, as of June 2007, Nabaztag fully supports services in German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. The rabbits can be customized with Skinz tattoos, detachable USB tails in various colors, and many interchangeable ears with different designs and colors. The Nabaztag:tag and Karotz versions are capable of reading RFID chips, and products containing RFID chips include the Flatanoz key ring tags, miniature models of the rabbits called Nano:ztag, and some children's books. Individual RFID chips were also produced and were called ztamp:s.

Community Nabaztag owners can join social networks to share photos and videos on websites like Flickr and YouTube. Users can create podcasts (dubbed "Nabcasts" by Violet). There are currently over 100 of these available, mostly in English and French, created by different users on a variety of topics. Since Nabaztags can be programmed to provide new services using the API, there are user-created applications available, including a Dashboard widget and a lottery alarm.

Infrastructure shortcomings In December 2006 (most notably around Christmas) a number of sold rabbits caused issues for Violet, the maker of Nabaztag. The Nabaztag device acts as a client to the France-based servers. When users attempted to register their new devices, the centralized servers were unable to handle the demand, resulting in service disruptions, server unavailability, and data integrity problems caused by users creating multiple half-finished registrations. This resulted in a major customer service problem for Violet. The fundamental philosophy of Nabaztag, that all objects should be connected together on the Internet by a server maintained by Violet did not work as expected (e.g. the server sometimes could not cope with volume of traffic, services had to be switched off and there were unreliable response times often as slow as hours rather than seconds). In March 2008, Violet changed their server infrastructure and bunny software to use the standard XMPP protocol. Bunnies were thereafter reacting much more rapidly on average, although long delays still occurred sometimes. The change caused service disruptions and problems for a couple of weeks.

Technical specifications The device embeds a PIC18F6525 microcontroller, a BenQ PC card 802.11b Wi-Fi adapter, an ml2870a Audio-PCM sound generator, an ADPCM converter, two motors to activate the ears, a TLC5922 LED controller, and a small amount of memory. The embedded software handles the TCP/IP stack and Wi-Fi driver. It also implements a virtual machine which is able to execute up to 64 kb of code. A dedicated assembly language exists to program the different features of the device.

Nabaztag/tag Out on market on 12 December 2006, Nabaztag/tag is an improved model of Violet's Nabaztag. The new model supports MP3 audio streaming for Internet radio (with preset radio stations and an app allowing to add your own stream that does not work) and podcasts. This second version Nabaztag has also added a microphone that allows for voice activation of some of its services. However, despite text on the website claiming that new services will be available soon, the number of working voice activated services remains less than a handful. A final added feature is a built-in RFID reader to detect special-purpose RFID tags (i.e. ISO/IEC 14443 Type B). Nabaztag advertisement is presenting the ability to identify objects (depicted are e.g. keys). Nabaztag/tag can, as of November 2007, use RFID tags to read special edition versions of children's books by the French publisher Gallimard Jeunesse. In October 2008, Violet launched RFID Children's Books with Penguin Publishing House. Further RFID services and support have been promised. Violet has now started selling the Zstamps and Nano:ztags (little mini Rabbits with Zstamps inside them) and another called mir:ror which is its own RFID system separate from the Nabaztag. The Wi-Fi was also upgraded to support WPA encryption, and now uses a cheaper SoftMAC card instead of the BenQ device which embedded its own 802.11 protocol stack.

Cessation of service Mindscape, filing for bankruptcy, discontinued the Nabaztag/tag web service in late July 2011.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nabaztag

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nabaztag claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nabaztag before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nabaztag ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nabaztag

In research: Nabaztag appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nabaztag in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nabaztag is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2000s robots, Entertainment robots, Personal assistant robots, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nabaztag outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nabaztag in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nabaztag means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nabaztag out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nabaztag in simple terms?

Why does Nabaztag matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nabaztag?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nabaztag.