The Wakamaru robot is a cute yellow bot, released by Mitsubishi. The robot was developed to speak to people, as well as to understand what you're telling it and can help the user with his/her house chores. It can "live" according to its preset daily schedules and it can update them, according to its user's needs. And this means it could be a great companion for both elders and kids.



In case some of you might wonder, the robot's nickname is taken from a well-known Japanese samurai, called Minamoto Yoshitsune, whose childhood name was “Ushi-wakamaru”, that is associated with “growth”.



The yellowish robot responds to actions that come from the people, but it can also take the initiative when talking to the family, using the information it gathers from getting in touch with them. The bot can connect itself to the network to provide the information it needs for its daily routine.



It also looks after the house, while the family is out, and can even watches out for unusual weather conditions. Wakamaru was designed in the shape of a human being so that people won't consider it a “machine”. Therefore, it it was added a cute face expression, which make the bot appear friendly.



Besides that, the robot can recognize approximately 10.000 words necessary for daily life, it can recognize its owner and speaks to them about appropriate topics. Among the robot's features there are some sensors for position measurement, infra-red ray obstacle detection, collision detection, etc.



The built-in processing unit allows the bot to avoid obstacles and to move quite easily to the registered map, as well as “follow” and “ find” people. There is also an integrated option that allows the robot to move to the charging panel the moment it runs out of battery.



For those of you that are unaware of the subject, Wakamaru was put on sale a couple of years ago, for a price tag of 13.000. Then, just as Honda did with its humanoid robot ASIMO, one could rent a Wakamaru for about $1000, for up to five days, which is even more expensive than buying it.