Pirkus-R Bluetooth bot gains facial recognition

We haven't seen much of the Pirkus-R Type-01 bot being developed by KDDI and I Bee over in Japan, but it just got a facial recognition upgrade from its human masters. Pirkus-R is a Bluetooth enabled bipedal robot that can be controlled from your phone and walk around of its own volition. If it spots a face it wants to identify, the bot can track its target until it's close enough to match the face with its registry. The little humanoid is set to make an appearance as a contender in the Robo-One fights this weekend at Panasonic Center Tokyo.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 17th 2006 4:17PM]

Next item on the agenday: Find Sarah Connor

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 17th 2006 4:59PM]

For marketing purposes, you could through one in a battle-bot arena with the big ones, that would be funny... just need a secret weapon, muhahaha :-)

[IcerC Posted Mar 17th 2006 7:30PM]

Walking, Jump, kick, stand on one leg:)
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.robot-labs.jp%2Ftop.html&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 21st 2006 9:53AM]

The demonstration at Robo-One in Tokyo last Saturday went pretty well out in the exhibitor's hallway. The technology actually functions and does a reasonable job. Unfortunately under the bright, high contrast stage lighting in the ring the robot appeared to be unable to successfully recognize the subject as you can see from this video clip we took- http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/03/funny_face_robo.html

It was able to recognize hand movements and strike back at them, and to react.