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ASUS Unveils $599 Home Robot 'Zenbo' (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In addition to the razor thin ZenBook 3, Asus unveiled a cute talking robot for the home at this week's Computex trade show in Taipei. The robot, called Zenbo, is priced at $599 and is pitched as a personal assistant that can help look after elderly relatives or read stories to the kids. It's about two feet tall and rolls around on wheels, with a display that can show animated faces or be used for making video calls and streaming movies. When asked, "Hey Zenbo, is it true you can take pictures?" by ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih, the robot replied with, "Yes, I can take photographs." Zenbo took a photo of him on stage with the audience in the background when Shih told it to. The robot doesn't have an official release date yet, but developers can sign up for a software kit to build applications for it now.
Of faces, gestures, and phrases will ensure that after hearing and seeing them about two hundred times the users will want to chuck the thing through the nearest window. However, any infirm users will simply have to endure the torture.
It better give good blow jobs at that price.
Yes, but can you (strike)run Linux on it(/strike) have sex with it?
Nifty!
What I didn't see in TFA was whether or not this little bastard spies on you to "improve your experience".
"Anonymous" submission indeed!
You know we have reached the end times...
We're doomed! DOOOMED!
Sony won't.
I'm definitely buying stock in Old Glory insurance now!
So I can 3D print it at home with my replicator?
I hope someone got paid well at Slashdot for this advertisement, complete with developers link.
Hey look at this POS, sign up and develop it for us...
Can it vacuum/do dishes/iron my shirt?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Thanks Asus, no need to interact with those inconvenient offspring ever again! Or those unwanted old age parents! I hope the battery lasts a long time! The future rules!
Given the number of old people who eventually die by falling asleep while smoking, an intelligent smoke detector might be a good idea.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I whish they'd focus on building a really good cleaning bot instead of toys.
Would be a great help for the elderly too.
Roomba could use some hard competition.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Its really hard to do. It takes a lot of force to clean some surfaces. That requires a heavy robot. Then it needs to dispose of debris it collects so it has to be able to dump that somewhere appropriate. It needs to take care not to damage delicate things as well.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
my cat is not "debris" you insensitive clod!
Roomba could use some hard competition.
There's a dozen hard competitors to Roomba.
http://thesweethome.com/review...
http://heavy.com/tech/2015/02/...
Here's a novel idea -- instead of buying a piece of equipment to read to your kids, do it yourself. Kids need quality interaction with their parents and having machine read to them is not much better than plopping them in front of the tv.
It also needs a cat-sized nozzle and a sorting or filtering system.
Does "Zenbo" mean "creepy" in a relevant dialect? Or are we just supposed to infer that?
There is a company working on (selling?) robots to help with elderly in assisted living situations. The robots are able to emote and express compassion. They seem to work well and in general are well accepted by shut in's.
Now, if only "cute" meant .... you know... CUTE!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Dead before it even gets going.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I really, really want one of these things. I can tell you that my kids would lose their minds over it, and just as a basic but really capable telepresence platform it would be very cool. It would be a way more interactive means to skype with the kids on work trips, or check on the pets while we're out. Since Amazon is making Alexa portable to other systems, you could do some really freaking neat stuff with this. Looks like the developer registration site is slashdotted otherwise I would sign up right now.
Remember AIBO? That thing cost 4x as much and didn't have anything like the connectivity or versatility - and still managed to push 150k units. I'm hoping this is the first step into general-purpose home robotics. Unfortunately, tech specs are scarce. The critical thing to know is whether it's a little Linux box inside... if so, I foresee a big hit, at least with the geek dad crowd.
First Person to find the backdoor for the Chinese goverment to allow personalized moveable home spying gets a free mousepad!
I want a robot vacuum that can do stairs.