NEC's domesticated R100 robot welcomes you home, flips channels

by Darren Murph, posted Nov 13th 2006 at 11:02AM

NEC has a new home-roaming robot on the loose, which doesn't deviate too terribly much from its PaPeRo sibling visually, but sports a much more domesticated allure in its feature set. Weighing about 17.5 pounds, the R100 sports two CCD cameras as "eyes," three built-in microphones to hear commands from any direction, a bevy of sensors which detects your "tap, stroke, or press" to prevent it from cruising into tables or chairs (or children), and even environmental sensors to measure temperature and ambient light. It motors around at a blistering 1.34 miles per hour, and boasts a moveable head, a pair of integrated speakers, and facially-implanted LEDs for flashing communications. The bot is notorious for sparking conversation with its family, greets users by name, asks what it can do to help out, and even reads your email to you via its built-in WiFi capability. Moreover, it can beam commands to switch television channels, dim your lights, or activate a variety of appliances around the house. While there's no set release date for the prototype, we certainly wouldn't mind pairing this fellow up with our own robotic butler for the ultimate life of luxury, and you catch a more in-depth glimpse by sneaking a peek of the R100 in action.

[Via Ubergizmo]

Filed under: Robots, Wireless

Tags: butler, domesticated, email reader, EmailReader, house robot, household, HouseRobot, maid, nec, R100, wifi

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

mespinosam @ Nov 13th 2006 11:35AM

i , for one, .... forget it ...

Neutral

DonGeronimo @ Nov 13th 2006 12:00PM

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down...

Neutral

rench @ Nov 13th 2006 12:13PM

awww. the fisher-price robot!

Neutral

kizildere @ Nov 13th 2006 12:42PM

looks cute. lol.

Neutral

Thomas Tolleson @ Nov 13th 2006 1:27PM

Locomotion seems to be a problem for it. The wiggling action is both bizarre and nonproductive (from the video).

And by the way, is this a girl lying pantsless on the floor listening to the robot?

Neutral

Thomas Tolleson @ Nov 13th 2006 1:29PM

[img]http://www.incx.nec.co.jp/robot/R100/english/version-e/villu03-e.gif[/img]

Neutral

Thomas Tolleson @ Nov 13th 2006 2:04PM

Here's the damn image:

http://www.incx.nec.co.jp/robot/R100/english/version-e/villu03-e.gif

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