SmartPal V Sorts Laundry, Looks Menacing
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 12 of February , 2008 at 6:23 am
The fact that Yasukawa Electric Corporation’s SmartPal V knows how to sort laundry by color and type, and then hangs it up, makes me instantly distrust it, simply because it’s smarter than I am. When it comes to laundry, anyway… But is sorting laundry really so different from enslaving humanity? Hm? Is it? IS IT? Yes, yes it is.
SmartPal V was designed from the ground up to be a service robot, helping people in their homes with daily tasks. It stands nearly four and a half feet tall and weighs an intimidating 280 pounds. At least you can outrun its top speed of 2.2 mph. Using 4 CCD cameras and voice recognition, it can recognize and respond to individuals, or just wander around and keep things tidy on its own. 21 joints including a bendable waist allow it to pick things up off the floor, and it can continue to do so until its battery runs out after about 2.5 hours, or until you get tired of listening to it use its voice synthesizer to complain about how it’s got a brain the size of a planet, but you’re making it pick up trash and sort laundry.
Definitely too early for availability, but I’m fairly confident that production is in the cards, since Japan seems to be looking towards robots for elder care in the near future.
[ News Release (Google Translated) ] VIA [ Technovelgy ]
Category: Consumer
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