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Cool Personal Robots
300e24 writes "I have always wanted a robot around the house, not the useless but fun Sony Aibo, but something which can actually do things for me. I always thought it was a pipe dream, until I found this review of a very interesting (and surprisingly cheap) robot. " The software unfortunately looks to be windows based, but its interesting: it maps out its space, and can automatically dock/recharge itself.
Well, it is cool but for 1000 bucks I'd want more than that. Using your PC for processing power is a great idea though, this can help keep costs down for future robots, as well as the interface it provides.
We're still quite a ways off from a decent robot for home use. To be more than a novel conversation piece it needs to do a lot of things that depend on AI that just haven't been devolped yet (or at least at an affordable cost). High resolution sensors and powerful servos are just too expensive for the consumer marketplace. It would be really helpful for it to be bipedal as well. I've seen a few bipedal bots developed by scientists but it hasn't got very far beyond the research stage.