Video Wednesday: Keepon Gets Squished, Stripped Naked
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 11 of February , 2009 at 6:06 am
When we met Keepon at CES in January, we made sure to ask Marek Michalowski why Keepon costs $30,000. And the answer is that he’s built to be durable, out of premium components, and here’s why:
Ouch. Poor lil’ guy. But with 30k under the hood, he’s obviously able to stand up to it. This clip is from The Works, a show on the History Channel hosted by Daniel Wilson, author of the hilariously informative book How To Survive A Robot Uprising.
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Comment by Michael R. "Glitch" Martin
Made Wednesday, 11 of February , 2009 at 9:45 am
I still say Keepon’s developers have set an arbitrarily high cost by, perhaps, trying to roll development cost into low number sold. It couldn’t possibly contain $30K worth of components. It’s perhaps a bit smarter than those robotic gremlins of the 1990s, but it is still a handful of motors, sensors, and microprocessors. Those just aren’t that expensive any longer – even purpose built parts.
Comment by Ironman
Made Wednesday, 11 of February , 2009 at 3:51 pm
he’s controlled like a swash bot.
you could probably a dancing version that’s a lot cheaper that wouldn’t need to take all of the abuse.
still love it.
Comment by Marek Michalowski
Made Thursday, 12 of February , 2009 at 10:40 am
Michael: thank you for your comment, but I must respectfully disagree with it. The cost is not “arbitrarily high” — these are in fact the manufacturing costs we’re currently working with. First, the components are indeed high-end and do cost thousands of dollars by themselves. Second, the robots are hand-made in Japan and the labor is expensive. Keepon Pro is at this point a research platform intended for institutional use. That said, we are certainly working hard to reduce the costs.
Evan: thanks for the post! Also, our new Korean music video is up here.