Though we have seen a lot of robots designed as toys and some pretty cute ones too, they usually not last very much on the markets, either because of their price, or because of the fact that robots are boring. This one right here intends to contradict me regarding its entertainment skills, as it is also capable of docking an iPod touch.

It is called robovie-mR2 and has been built by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan (ATR) so that it functions as a sociable toy. The gadget is very nice to you as you will be able to see in the video below and will communicate with its owner just as soon as they put an iPod in it.

Otherwise, it does not work. It has a height of 30 cm and weighs about two kilograms, so if the iPod docking station is the part of the robovie-mR2 that interests you, it will easily fit on your desktop or wherever you need the music.

It will act as an intermediary between everything you have on your iPod and you, and the robot is controlled via its touchscreen. Besides this option of control, you will also be able to call it to you without physical contact, through wireless or Bluetooth.

The gizmo has a camera so that it snaps pictures of you like the Sony Aibo used to, two microphones and a mono speaker, making it a lousy iPod dock system. It runs on 18 servo motors. The producers at ATR are not sure whether they want to put the robovie-mR2 on the market and they will announce the price in case they decide to do so.

What I particularly like about the translation embedded on the clip below, which I got from CrunchGear, is the fact that the robot is talking about joy and sorrow. I myself do not speak Japanese, so I can't tell if it is the translator’s fault or the producers that put the recording with the robot. They forgot to mention that it has feelings.




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