Robotic Nation Evidence

Go-with-you robot sidekick unveiled

From the article:

unveiled robots to help out the elderly and children from the home to the shopping mall by following them and responding to their voices.

The "ApriAttanda" identifies an individual with its visual sensor and high-speed image processing system and follows the person.

When the person moves forward, the robot moves forward. When the person stops, the robot stops — while maintaining a certain distance.

Toshiba welcomes ApriAttenda to robot family

From the article:

The new robots, which way from 10Kgs to 30Kgs, have been designed as life-support partners for humans, able to provide assistance in looking after the elderly or young children when you are at home or out and about.

Toshiba originally announced its ApriAlpha robot back in 2003. Since then it has developed a new prototype robot, the ApriAttenda and updated the technology inside the original ApriAlpha version.

The ApriAlpha V3 can recognise its owners voice from a crowd of talking individuals using omnidirectional voice capture and respond to their command, Understand and respond to several conversations going on at once and connect to the internet an operate networked home appliances.

The idea is to create a robot that can keep up with a child or an adult, carry packages, and generally hang around in case something goes wrong. It is the first step toward the robotic Nanny. If you gave it a gun or a Taser, it might be the first step toward a robotic body guard.