ApriAlpha: Toshiba's New Personal Robot

Posted 24 Mar 2003 at 14:42 UTC by steve

Toshiba has announced a new personal robot called the ApriAlpha. The 9.5 Kg spherical robot has 3 wheels and sports a CCD camera complete with face recognition. It also has a speech synthesizer, speech recognition, and speech localization - that last feature allows it to come to you when you call. And to stay in touch, it can use 802.11b or Bluetooth to link with your LAN. An IR receiver lets you command it with a conventional remote control and it can also send photos taken with its camera to cell phones. It uses ultrasonic sensors for obstacle avoidance. The robot is powered by a conventional battery but can optionally use Toshiba's recently introduced methanol fuel cell.