Comments on: Video Wednesday: Keepon Gets Squished, Stripped Naked

By: Marek Michalowski

Marek Michalowski — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:40:40 +0000

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.

By: Ironman

Ironman — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:51:50 +0000

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.

By: Michael R. "Glitch" Martin

Michael R. "Glitch" Martin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:45:45 +0000

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.