ETRI's ROMI cleaning bot could beat up, insult your Roomba

by Paul Miller, posted Jan 4th 2007 at 8:15PM

What's the Roomba got, Bleeps and bloops? Love in its cold metallic heart? Pshaw. Korea's ETRI just unveiled it's new ROMI bot, which can love your family so much better. Not only is ROMI quite the cutie, but it can clean floors with the best of 'em, all while taking commands via (presumably) WiFi and CDMA, recording video with its big camera eyes, and vocalizing via a speech synthesizer. We're sure it's all just a proud, fragile shell, overcompensating for ROMI's general depression and dissatisfaction for the world that give him birth, but we suppose we'll find out when we see this guy at CES and as him a few psychoanalytical questions -- don't worry, it's all in the line of duty.

[Via Akihabara]

Filed under: Household, Robots

Tags: cleaning robot, CleaningRobot, etri, robot, romi, roomba

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Chris Merchant @ Jan 4th 2007 8:26PM

Well he's certianly big enough... Slide this one under a cabinet? Think again!

Pretty interesting looking guy- wouldn't want him to be 'housed' or 'docked' anywhere I have to sleep. I'd hate to wake up to that every morning.

Chris

Neutral

Christian Martin @ Jan 4th 2007 8:35PM

If this thing can indeed be made to sound like Marvin, I'm down.

Neutral

Austin @ Jan 4th 2007 10:12PM

Funny, i just finished the hitchhiker series and now i see references to it everywhere,

Neutral

icepop4who @ Jan 4th 2007 8:40PM

What is this? Roomba week? I swore that I've seen 3 or 4 automated house cleaning (i.e. roomba) devices announcements this week. and, why are all the new devices R2-D2 sized? whatever happen to tiny roomba?

Neutral

Jon @ Jan 4th 2007 10:00PM

as noted above a floor cleaner is useless if it's tall and can't go under chairs, cabinets and tables.

Neutral

Seth @ Jan 4th 2007 10:06PM

Oh,you know it's getting a dalek voice to match the k-9 voice my aibo's got.

Neutral

Motoxo @ Jan 4th 2007 10:51PM

Does anyone else think this?

*exterminate*

*exterminate*

Neutral

Motoxo @ Jan 4th 2007 10:52PM

Darn it. I was slow on the draw. Someone else got the dalek reference. I so would want to make it look like a mini dalek if I had one.

Neutral

Thomas @ Jan 4th 2007 11:23PM

"I am Robot 1-X. I am here to serve you."

Neutral

Bipedal @ Jan 5th 2007 12:28AM

I, for one, welcome our new house cleaning, floor mopping, video taking, talking robot overlords.

Neutral

carly Short @ Jan 5th 2007 10:26PM

These things are cool and all, but the last thing we need is something to make life even easier than it already is, america is already so lazy, before you know it we will be able to get fat on the couch while the robots cook, clean, and earn us money. Get up and get some exercise!

Neutral

kdog @ Jan 9th 2007 2:11AM

Looks Very Similar to the TOMY Omnibot.
So much for innovation.

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