Robot Living

At the ILTCI 2010, (Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance Conference), in New Orleans on March 14th-17th, French robotic company Robotsoft will introduce the robot Kompaï.

Kompaï is a companion style robot that can speak, understand verbal commands, navigate a home and always stays connected to the internet.  Kompaï can remember appointments and make shopping lists as well.

This very first version is called Kompaï R&D, is intended for developers who want to implement their own robotics application for assistance of dependent persons.

The Robosoft press release states:

Kompaï is intended to help dependent persons in their daily lives. It is a mobile and communicative product. Somewhat like a dog, it has its “basket”, which is the recharging dock that it heads back to when its batteries are low. Equipped with speech, it is able to understand simple orders and give a certain level of response. It knows its position within the house, how to get from one point to another on demand or on its own initiative, and it remains permanently connected to the internet and all its associated services.

Click through for an impressive video of an elderly man interacting with Kompaï.

Link via (IEEE Spectrum)

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For those of you you are still battling winter and snow, we give you RoboPlow from IdeaLaboratories.

This awesome beast has a 50 inch blade, 6 wheels and 660 amps of power.

See our post from last year about a similar snow shoveling robot.

Link via (Gizmodo)

Kevin Haw has hacked a Robosapien to do his bidding over the internet.

Utilizing an Arduino and an Ethernet shield in between, he can make the robot high five and whistle among other cool things.

Complete project page with code at Arduino.cc.

Link via (Make)

A new robot from MIT called MeBot has been unveiled recently.  This robotic avatar is designed to give the user a richer more interactive experience when communicating through live video.

The MeBot’s head tilts and the arms move to help convey the users mood and expression to other viewers.

We conducted an experiment that evaluated how people perceived a robot-mediated operator differently when they used a static telerobot versus a physically embodied and expressive telerobot. Results showed that people felt more psychologically involved and more engaged in the interaction with their remote partners when they were embodied in a socially expressive way. People also reported much higher levels of cooperation both on their own part and their partners as well as a higher score for enjoyment in the interaction.

Click through for a short video.

Link via (Dvice)

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Cycler robot, sometimes called Recycler, by David Buckley has been in business for more than 10 years.

Cycler was created to help teach children to recycle and is used in school presentations. Cycler can control some functions on his own, but for some bigger functions he is controlled by a handler.  See more about the school programs and cost here, or download the Recycler pdf file.

David Buckley is a roboticist from the UK who has been making robots since the 1970’s.

Click through for a video of handlers practicing with Cycler.

Link
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