This Robot’s Offspring Will Clean Your Future Home - 6:36 PM
Bossa Nova Robotics has developed a robot that the company says
is “the first step towards the creation of a 21st century
personal robotics platform for everyday consumers.” It’s called
Project mObi, and instead of wheels or even bipedal legs, it
uses a sphere for locomotion. This “ballbot” approach is based
on technology patented by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute.
The robot balances and moves around on a sphere at its base,
which lets it navigate deftly through human environments and
means it can have a slimmer profile. I think it gives the robot
prototype a kind of Rosie from The Jetsons look. Or maybe a
Dyson vacuum cleaner. mObi stands 4 feet, 9 inches tall and is
19 inches at its widest point. Up top it uses a tablet as a
head, and that blue circle on its body is its “Emotive Light
Array,” which looks like it could be used for signaling what
state or mode it’s in. It can run Windows or ROS, the open
source Robot Operating System. You won’