I have to say that I’m not impressed by the name, but the Palro from Fujisoft sure is a cute looking robot.
Palro gets its ingenious name by combining “pal” and “robot.” I know, what will those crazy Japanese scientists think of next, right?
This little humanoid ‘bot stands about 16 inches tall and weighs 3.5 lbs. It’s got 20 joints, five mics, voice recognition, mono speakers, a 3MP camera, Wi-Fi, a USB port, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of internal memory, and 4GB flash memory. It runs on a version of Ubuntu Linux, and has a built-in gyro-sensor, accelerometer, eight pressure points in its feet as well as a distance sensor.
A video used to be embedded here but the service that it was hosted on has shut down.Fujisoft plans on selling about 1,000 Palros to start out with on March 15 at $3,300 (USD) a pop. These will first be offered to research institutions, but don’t worry, if you’ve got the dough, you’ll be able to get one later in 2010 for yourself.
[via CrunchGear]