Hey guys,
I know I’ve blogged about this before, but I’m pretty stoked about the official website dropping in 9 days. Check out my previous post about this little guy and then pick one up cause these are going to be awesome gifts for people. Especially for me. Yes, one of you must buy me one of these. Linkage
-Steve
Steve here hitting you with some more toy awesomeness. His name is Keepon and he has already captured the hearts of millions….
He’s a lot more than two little yellow balls, the Keepon designed by Marek Michalowski from Carnegie Mellon and Hideki Kozima from Japan’s National Institute of Communications Technology is chuck full of simple tech and mechanical engineering. The original design released in 2007 includes four motors to control a gimbal system, a rubber skin, two cameras located in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose, and a not so affordable $30,000 price tag. Originally designed as social communication bot, he will react to his environment in a multitude of ways through a teloperator. In laymen’s terms this means that he is controlled via a wireless connection by an outside operator when in testing with children to study the effects of attentive and emotive actions. In his debut to the world, it seems that he uses sound localization and facial recognition, but don’t quote me on that.
Alas, don’t fret over this monstrous pricetag; he will be available for purchase at a $40 at a significantly less intricate design with reduced functionality. Still seems like a kick-ass desktop companion, just check out the video after the break. To find out when you can own your very own Keepon, click here…..
Technically Speaking 