Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is set to start selling the Wakamaru personal robot in Japan in September. The child-sized robot is set to be priced at about 1 million yen (approximately US $14,250). In case, you didn’t know, the Wakamaru is 3.3 ft tall, 60 lbs and is meant to function as a house-sitter/caretaker/companion. It knows approximately 10,000 words, can recognize faces, is directly connected to the Internet (wish I was!), and can be hooked up to a cell phone to alert others in the case of a burglary or someone at home in distress. It can even follow voices and movement and can interact with people in a limited way.
Mitsubishi is only planning to sell 100 of these units which incidentally run on Linux. Although I realize this robot does not have anything really resembling true AI (Artificial Intelligence), this really reminds me of I Robot, but in a cool, non-freaky way. 😉