Nuvo the Humanoid Home Robot for $7000
	Posted 17 Nov 2005 at 15:36 UTC by The Swirling Brain

PC Magazine is showing the new Nuvo Cyclops Humanoid robot for a cool $6995! Made by Japanese company ZMP, Inc., Nuvo has been selling in Japan for about $5500 and will begin selling in US stores in about a month for $7000 for the standard version and $10,000 for the Japanism version. They claim the robot is the first humanoid robot in the world for home use! The robot is about 20 in. tall comes in bright child-friendly colors such as candy apple red, canary yellow, deep blue, grass green, and shiny silver. ZMP apparently designed Nuvo as a home companion for Japan's aging population. Nuvo can understand 50 clearly spoken words, it also has a remote control and has 802.11b wireless connectivity for control via a Windows PC. A single camera eye can take pictures periodically and send them to a cell phone. Nuvo can even arch its back to look upwards. It doesn't appear to have hands for grabbing, just ball nubs for appearance. It lacks artificial intelligence and edge detection so it can't learn not to walk off the stairs. If it did fall, it can get back up on its own, though. So what is it good for? Well it seems to be a great $7k remote control picture-taking device. If you're interested, you can purchase the robot exclusively for $6995 on Dynamism's website (although, they don't appear to have the green color nor the Japanism models).

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Who needs functionality anyway, posted 18 Nov 2005 at 03:38 UTC by marcin » (Journeyer)

It looks like the technology is pretty neat, and the miniaturisation is cool, but the lack of functionality for an expensive commercial product is ridiculous. Nevertheless, I'm sure there's people out there who want to go one better than the Robosapien and will be happy to pay the price.

Personally, I'd rather spend my money on an iDuck also available at dynamism.

Warranty, posted 18 Nov 2005 at 09:25 UTC by JamesBruton » (Master)

According to this page the manufactuer's warranty is only 90days??!!!! that's not long for something that costs 7k.

http://www.dynamism.com/nuvo/pricing.shtml

personally if I were buying an off the shelf robot it would be a White Box Robotics 9 series (despite my biped tendencies).

Home robot...not, posted 18 Nov 2005 at 14:32 UTC by motters » (Master)

Way too expensive for a home device. I bet future versions of Robosapien will easily beat this on price and performance.

Real platform, posted 18 Nov 2005 at 19:38 UTC by while_true » (Apprentice)

Too bad there isn't a truly useful platform out there. Forget going up & down stairs. Is there anything that is commercially available which has a serious manipulator?

My guess is no, given how hard that area is.

Till then, don't expect robots to do anything that doesn't only require navigation & perception, e.g. a robotic floor vac only needs to move around.