Banryu Available to Guard Your Home

Posted 7 Mar 2004 at 20:12 UTC by steve

tmsuk originally made conveyor belts for fishing trawlers, then they switched to making rice balls. Now they're developing robots. The tmsuk home guarding robot, Banryu, first started making news about year ago (you may remember it from some of the photo galleries in our Robodex 2003 coverage). According to a new asahi.com story, Banryu may finally be available for purchase. Roland Piquepaille's weblog contains a number of new photos and more details on Banryu. The 35 kg, 4-legged robot has over 50 sensors and can alert it's owner by cell phone if it detects a fire or an intruder. The cost? 1.98 million yen (about $17,600).

Well it lost my interest real quick, posted 8 Mar 2004 at 19:53 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

$18,000 bucks, forget it. Too expensive for me. The burglers would either drop kick it up off the wall or steal it themselves.

When I think about it, I could probably build one for a lot less. You can use a MCU, a room motion detector, a modem, and have it dial up your cell phone messaging service and email you a text message to your cell phone. Cost would be whatever you have in your junk box already or how much full cost you'd want to spend. Defintely not more than a few hundred. I think they've got articles on this using the Parallax Basic Stamps too.