Cute penguin robot is your Facebook companion - Arimaz
I got to sit down with Pierre Bureau, the founder and CEO of Arimaz in Switzerland, while he was visiting Silicon Valley. He showed me a demo of a prototype of a cute penguin robot that his company is planning to start selling in September for $99. The product is called MyDeskFriend. As the name proclaims, it is meant to be a small companion living on your desk. It comes with a docking station which is hooked up to the PC.
Here is the video of a quick demonstration. You can interact with the robot in multiple ways. It can follow your finger and will detect the edges of the your desk so that it doesn't fall over, thanks to 5 infrared sensors. There is also an accelerometer inside so it knows when it's being touched or shaken. The eyes will change color depending on the mood of the robot. If you shake it too much, it's eyes will turn red - meaning it's in a bad mood.
What's new about this robot is that you can connect it with your Facebook profile. There you can see that the robot is hungry or tired or needs exercise. You have to look after it like an artifcial pet. (You can feed a cookie when it's hungry.) The robot will read the messages from your friends as well as the weather forecast and news. Your friends can feed and interact with your robot remotely too through Facebook.
The robot follows voice commands and can memorize 10-15 different short key words of your choice.
The product is targeted at young adults that spend a lot of time in front of the computer, according to Pierre, who founded Arimaz after working over 6 years at another company in Switzerland developing research and educational robots.
Arimaz is willing to license it's technologies to other companies that want to develop a networked entertainment robot (and other electronic devices). They have developed software that manages the personality of the robot which is meant to evolve overtime. There is also a small "operating system" inside the robot that controls the motor and sensors. The client server architecture that connects the device to the web services sounded similar to what Speecys has. Both companies think that the key to entertainment robots is going to be the connection to the web.
(Photo:Pierre Bureau with prototype of MyDeskFriend)
(Photo: Yellow eyes mean it is happy.)
hmm... $99 bucks. You can get an iPhone for that price.
Posted by: A.J. | June 29, 2009 at 01:53 PM
nice penguin
ehh...
i like it) where i can get it?=)
Posted by: kai | June 30, 2009 at 02:45 AM
Arimaz is planning to start selling it online in Sept. We will keep you posted!
Posted by: Norri Kageki | June 30, 2009 at 07:44 AM
I am obbsessed with penguins...but I think that $99 is waaaaaaaaay out of my price range. Too bad. Good idea though, but a suggestion: LOWER the price.
Posted by: Haley | June 30, 2009 at 03:28 PM
Excellent idea for the thought target.
Even if... I think that this target will enlarge soon, given that even social networking is growing in usage by people... young from more time ;-)
Price is correct, if the technical features are top notch. Not well understood if the robot can read (I imagine through a fb plugin and text2speech synthesis) fb and web-sourced info via wireless streaming audio (from penguin base station?).
Great.
j
Posted by: jlm | July 23, 2009 at 06:06 AM
I watched the video and reran it twice. I still don't get it... at least from a business point of view.
Bossa Nova Robotics has a girls toy penguin that has a baby penguin similar to this. But it's a real toy geared to 4-6 year olds. Who is this for? Why?
Frank Tobe
The Robot Report
http://www.TheRobotReport.com
Tracking the business of robotics
Posted by: Frank | July 29, 2009 at 05:04 PM