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

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]

[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

[Christian Martin @ Jan 4th 2007 8:35PM]

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

[Austin @ Jan 4th 2007 10:12PM]

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

[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?

[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.

[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.

[Motoxo @ Jan 4th 2007 10:51PM]

Does anyone else think this?

*exterminate*

*exterminate*

[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.

[Thomas @ Jan 4th 2007 11:23PM]

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

[Bipedal @ Jan 5th 2007 12:28AM]

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

[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!

[kdog @ Jan 9th 2007 2:11AM]

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