Demo Flag Descriptions

Autostart demo at boot


Disable vocalisation

Disable translation




Disable rotation

Disable neck


Disable sleep

Disable cliff reflex




Disable shun cliffs



Disable affect from sound



Disable attend motion

Disable attend sounds


Disable attend faces

Disable attend ball

Disable express through tail

Disable express through light

Disable express through ears

Disable express through eyelids

Disable unhappiness

Disable move away



Disable stall detection




Disable sonar modulation




Debug sonar modulation





Debug detection

Causes the demo controller to be started automatically at boot time.

Turn off MiRo's voice.

Prevent MiRo from moving from the spot. This allows reduced supervision, but do not rely on perfect performance at staying put (e.g. do not trust MiRo to stay safely on a table!).

(Also) prevent MiRo from rotating its body around the spot.

Prevent MiRo from moving its neck (this does not imply disable translation or rotation).

Prevent MiRo from falling asleep.

MiRo will no longer protect itself from driving over cliffs; this can be useful in environments where there are no cliffs, and where the floor surface is causing the cliff detectors to misbehave.

Unless this flag is set, MiRo will actively turn away from cliffs when deciding what to do; with this flag set, MiRo will turn away only when something else gets its attention.

Make MiRo deaf for the purposes of affect (otherwise, loud sounds will make MiRo unhappy); useful in noisy environments such as exhibitions.

Do not attend moving objects detected by the cameras.

Do not attend to audio events such as hand claps or voices; useful in noisy environments such as exhibitions.

Ignore human faces when deciding where to look.

Do not attend to MiRo's toy blue ball.

Turn off expression through the tail.


Turn off expression through the (illumination) lights.


Turn off expression through the ears (rotation).


Turn off expression through the eyelids (blinking etc.).


Prevent MiRo from reaching less than neutral happiness.

Prevent MiRo from performing actions that cause it to "turn away" from what it is attending; together with the above flag, this renders MiRo rather positive in character.

Automatic wheel stall detection will usually cause MiRo to reverse and try something else; you will see this as the eyes are held briefly closed. Disable this if your floor surface is triggering the stall detector in error.

Without this flag, MiRo will use the nose-mounted sonar to reduce the incidence of running into obstacles in the environment; disable this if the sonar is faulty, to restore other functions.

Use this flag to determine if the sonar is operating correctly ("submarine" sonar pings indicate the measured range to an obstacle, whilst the frequency and amplitude of "trilling" indicates that MiRo is resisting forward motion because it detects an obstacle ahead).

This rather crass flag will cause MiRo to make an annoying noise when it detects a face or its toy ball.