Have you ever wanted to own your own robot like in the Jetson's cartoon? Well now you can thanks to Mitsubishi Heavy. They have created wakamaru a robot that rolls on wheels, is 1m tall, weighs 30kg, understands 10,000 words, and recognizes 10 faces. wakamaru was created in 2003 and won Good Design Award but is now on sale to the public for around $14,300 Yen.
wakamaru's was created with the goal of keeping a family household in order by providing information and support. According to the concept listed on wakamaru's website, wakamaru connects itself to the network using wireless technology to provide necessary
information for daily life. It appears it relies on information from the Internet as well as programmed or memorized information to do so. It looks after the house while the family
is absent, watches out for unusual conditions, and is convenient for
the life of family members.
The robot uses memory and camera technology to remember faces as well as to navigate through your house with ease. It remembers up to 10 faces based on a face recognition technology that uses an eye to look at a face and then plots points on that face to try and match it up with previously memorized face grids. As for navigating through your house it has a special eye on the top of it's head that allows it to look at the ceiling and then compare where it is in respect to a previously entered floor plan of your home. I wonder if it ever gets lost?
For more information on wakamaru check out this I4U News post and this post on Ilren Blog. Additionally, visit the wakamaru website here.
