We’ve been waiting for this moment for literally three years now. Keepon, everyone’s favorite yellow squishbot and arguably the world’s best robot dancer, is going to be available.

For you.

To buy.

For $40.

$40!

BeatBots, maker of the Keepon Pro (the $30,000 research Keepon) has partnered with the UK’s Wow! Stuff (who also made this) to create ‘My Keepon,’ a toy version of the Keepon that we know and love. From the press release:

Wow!’s design experts and robotics engineers, based in their recently-opened Los Angeles office, worked closely with BeatBots to design a toy that captured the essence of the Keepon character while replicating the robot’s most engaging interactive traits. These features include reactivity to touch and an amazing ability to listen to music, detect the beat, and dance in perfect rhythm!

But most importantly, Wow! Stuff and BeatBots are working to ensure that the success of My Keepon will directly support the social welfare goals at the heart of the Keepon story. “A percentage of the profit from each My Keepon will go towards subsidizing and donating BeatBots’ research-grade robots to therapists and researchers,” said Taylor. “We are so proud to make Keepon available to a broader audience, and we will choose retail partners who also feel proud to sell him.”

Michalowski commented, “Our dream is to make Keepon Pro units widely available to researchers and practitioners. Our work with Keepon suggests that the character’s simplicity, combined with a caregiver’s ability to conduct mediated interactions through the robot, can facilitate social engagement in a novel and exciting way. We hope that the toy version of our robot can channel public excitement towards general autism awareness while supporting our distribution of tools and resources to people and organizations around the world working to understand and treat it.”

Sadly, these are all the details that I’ve got for you at the moment. I did talk with Dr. Michalowski a little bit about the toy, and I can say that they’re trying very hard to make sure that the core functionality (and look) that makes Keepon Pro so endearing will be there in the toy version. It’s easy to look at that $40 price point with concern, but I’m optimistic, and it’s also important to remember that commercializing My Keepon is going to help make Keepon Pro cheaper and more available to people who need it, so it’s good news for everyone.

My Keepon is still in the prototype stage, but we’ve been promised one of the first review units when they’re available, which means you’ll get the first look at them too. SWEET!

[ BeatBots ]

Really, I have no idea what this means. It’s “Keepon Dreaming” and it’s apparently not a Photoshop, but comes from the official BeatBots blog. Maybe this is the new $30 consumer version of Keepon? Maybe?

Please?

[ BeatBots ]

Remember how Chief Cook tried to cheat at pong at ICRA in 2008 by going “hey, look over there, a dancing robot!” Well, now we know what he was pointing at.

If you want more (you want more, right?) head over to Eric Sauser’s website to watch a video of Chief Cook dancing all around Switzerland (complete with table dances) to some sweet, sweet Buffalo Springfield.

[ LASA @ EPFL ]
[ BeatBots ]

You might not think of the internet smiley emoticon as something that some guy just invented, but that’s exactly what happened. Scott E. Fahlman, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, came up with it on September 19, 1982. Three years ago, he established the Smiley Award, and this year, Keepon won with this:

(o.o)
( )

Which you can abbreviate to:

(o.o)

I have no idea what emotion (o.o) is supposed to convey, and actually, the award is for Keepon itself, not the appropriateness of the emoticon. But who cares, it’s cute.

[ BeatBots ]

Paro: Paro is still as cute and fluffy as ever; there are no hardware updates but Paro did get approval this year from the FDA to be sold as a medical device. Your insurance company still isn’t likely to pay for one if you get sick, but they’re working on that too.

[ Paro ]

Keepon: the big news here is that Keepon is getting redesigned with a new internal structure that reduces costs by a factor of ten without sacrificing any functionality. Four figures is still not a whole lot better than five as far as you and I buying one goes, but give it another year or two and maybe we’ll see another zero (or two, please make it two) chopped off of that price.

Oh, and thanks to a night out clubbing in Vegas with Marek Michalowski, I think I’ve figured out where Keepon gets his awesome dance moves.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

[ Keepon ]

Just because a real Keepon is too expensive for anyone to afford doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to make one for yourself, and it doesn’t even have to be (technically) edible. Limitless Boredom created their very own astonishingly similar DIY Keepon out of a bunch of R/C helicopter parts, CrabFu style. Seriously, it’s such a good reproduction that it makes me wonder where that $30k really goes…

By way of comparison, after the jump you can watch a video of a pair of Keepons dancing with HOAP-3 at the ICRA ’08 Human-Robot Interaction Challenge. (Read more…)

If you know Keepon, you also know the feeling of OMG WHERE CAN I GET ONE!?!! As always, Trossen Robotics is here to sate your robot lust (in some ways, anyway) with their new Keepon inspired USB Dancebot. Featuring gyroscopically stabilized dancing action, the USB Dancebot also uses revolutionary new biomorphic body units that may increase the level of squishy to dangerous new heights. It’s $249.00, which is about a hundred times cheaper than the original Keepon, and should be available in kit form (tasty looking elastic biomorphic body units and all) sometime soon.

Watch the complicated and intricate construction process, after the jump. (Read more…)

From Wikipedia:

Pungmul, or nongak, is a Korean folk music tradition that includes drumming, dancing, and singing [AND ROBOTS]. Most performances are outside, with tens of players [AND ONES OF ROBOTS], all in constant motion.

Pungmul is rooted in the dure (collective labor) farming [AND ROBOT] culture. It was originally played as part of farm work, on rural holidays, at other village community-building events, and in shamanistic [ROBOT] rituals. Today it has expanded in meaning and is also used in political protest and as a performing art form [FEATURING ROBOTS].

And if it’s on Wikipedia, we all know it must be true.

[ BeatBots ]

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.

[ BeatBots ]

If you’re wondering what the highlight of CES was for me, it wasn’t the Microsoft keynote, it wasn’t the party I just got back from at the top of the Palms Fantasy tower, and it wasn’t any of this stuff. No, as you may have guessed (if you’ve spent much time reading BotJunkie), it was finally finally getting a chance to meet Keepon, the squishy little yellow BeatBot.

Alongside Keepon (and another Keepon) was Marek Michalowski, the founder of BeatBots and co-creator of the robot. Marek was showing off some new features like Wiimote control, and talking a little bit about his current research. Check it out:

Just a reminder that Keepon is currently available in a hand-built $30,000 version, but BeatBots is working on something significantly more affordable. And I have to say, Keepon is WAY CUTER in person, and he is exactly as soft and squishy as he looks. He does that little double bounce thing and head tilt and I totally melt. Marek says he’s got two of these at home, and I honestly don’t know how he gets anything done with them around.

As far as I know, Keepon will be at CES through Sunday, so if you have any questions or picture/video requests, post in the comments and I’ll gladly go back… I’ll take any excuse to poke Keepon a bunch more in his little yellow belly.

[ BeatBots ]