bipedal

The official website of Zeno, Hanson Robotics' humanoid robot is now up at Zenosworld. According to the official blog, prototype versions of Zeno will be sold for $15000 while the consumer versions due in about 2 years will cost between $200 and $1000. [Edit: price information yet to be determined]. Hanson Robotics are thinking beyond personal robotics and have developed a story about Zeno that could make him a star of TV or film. Set in the year 2027, "the Zeno character is an intelligent robot child, enrolled in an 'Inventing Academy'—a school where little robots learn to invent to make the world a better place. Though Zeno is smart, he’s emotionally just a kid, and must learn how to manage his precocious powers and to get along with the other robot kids, or RoboKind. When Zeno discovers that evil professor Blanc has secretly infected students with a corrupting virus ... continued

Taiwan-based GeStream Tech has created a robot (left photograph) that it claims is the world's smallest commercially available bipedal robot standing at 15cm (5.9"). Just recently, Guinness World Records officially gave this title to Tomy Takara's i-SOBOT which stands at 6.5" (pictured above right). The new Taiwanese robot which has 16 degrees of freedom is set to be unveiled a the Global SMEs in Malaysia. No details have been given about the consumer launch of the robot but it will supposedly come in a kit requiring assembly. GeStream is looking into adding voice control and producing the robot in different shapes and colors. Pricing is quoted to be between $185 and $200. See a video of a development version of GeStream's robot above. The new robot seems to lack the fluidity that i-SOBOT is seen to have in its videos, so despite the possible new entry into the small bipedal market, waziwazi is still excited as ever for little i-SOBOT's launch this October. [Update: the GeStream Tech robot is called BeRobot RD]

This is a great year for the consumer robotics industry in the US. iRobot just introduced their new Roomba 500 series and next month Ugobe and Tomy Takara will begin shipping their Pleo and i-SOBOT robots respectively. Today, PC Mag is reporting that Hanson Robotics are about to unveil one of their first entries into the personal robotics market, a 17"-tall humanoid robot called Zeno. Part of the Robokind line of personal interactive robots, Zeno is a bipedal robot modeled like the cartoon character Astroboy. Hanson Robotics has designed the animated head which features 12 motors while the body has been designed by Robo-Garage's Tomotaka Takahashi who we interviewed recently. ... continued

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Japanese robot maker Speecys, founded by a former Sony Aibo-project employee, has just released the 1 foot-tall SPC-101 bipedal robot. The ~$3000 robot is capable of face recognition and can communicate wirelessly with the PC or cell phone. Resembling quite like Elvis, the little guy can dance while reading out your PIM schedule and emails. SPC-101 features 22 degrees of freedom.

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It's been a while since Asimo was in the news. We all remember when poor Asimo tumbled down onto his face (see the ghastly video below) during a demo in Japan. A new Asimo which can run at a speed of about 4mph (6.4kmph) was introduced today at Disneyland's (California) permanent show called 'Say Hello to Honda's ASIMO'. The show is said to be the only year-round installation of ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative MObility) in the US. ... continued

Ugobe's Pleo is not the only robot to look forward to these holidays. i-SOBOT, touted as the world's smallest commercial humanoid robot, will finally be available this October. Standing at just 6.5" (16cm), The little robot can operate in four modes: remote controlled mode, a programmable mode, voice-control mode, dance mode and an action mode. In the programmable mode, you will be able to instruct i-SOBOT to perform a sequence of actions. There are approximately 200 actions built into the robot such as turn left, raise leg etc. Tomy Takara, the Japanese maker of the robot, has a preliminary website up showing an English-speaking black robot and a Japanese-speaking white robot. See the video below, taken from Robots Dreams, of i-SOBOT introducing himself. ... continued