Whatever happened to the Rosie the Robot?

She's in Japan.

So I remember being in elementary school and an assembly taking place with local officer Cotton (who was the police liason for my districts DARE program at the time) and his new parter, a silly and fun information that looked like a cross between E.T and B-9 from Irwin Allen's Lost in Space (the series). I thought it was the coolest frikkin thing ever. To an 7 year old in 1988 (and a burgeoning sci-fi geek) the sight of Mike Cotton talking to a robot like would any of us was mind blowing.

So i wake up this morning and go to MyYahoo.com and see what fun filled news and events are going on in the world and i come across this juicy little number: Robots turn off senior citizens. Intruiged I clicked on it and saw this funny little guy. It's called the ifbot bot and it is created by a japanese company called Business Deseign Laboratories. This guys abilities include conversing, sing, express emotions and give trivia quizzes to seniors to help with their mental agility. According to the BDL's website (where they proclaim to be the head manufacturers of Hello Kitty toys) this little punk, which stands about two feet high, also features wheels for movement, a sensor that will move around obstacles, recognition of the user and some of the user's friends. And as if things couldn't get any cooler he also offers a handshake function.

So I looked at other sites and found a whole bunch of robots for personal use including a robot who can literally clean up the streets of crime as it is a body retrieval unit. A trash truck or corpses have you.



now my last example I give you Repliee q2, basically an early version of Lt. Data from Next Gen. I'm not entirely sure what her purpose is but it's really really bad how attractive I find her. I remember reading about her some 2 years ago and everything I hear about her since then has gotten weirder. Apparenlty she can speak 5 human languages, walk a semi human pace (she was said to be around that of a man on crutches. The videos I've seen of her on Youtube seem to support that. What's most striking is her extremely life like appearance and how natural she is programmed to act. enjoy these pictures. And no, the Blade Runner like implications are not lost on me.


Youtube has some amazing video of Repliee q2


My main point with all of these robots is this: they're all Japanese. Alot of the ones I've looked at were all in practical uses around Japan. So i ask again, Where the hell are all of our robots? I was led to believe when I was 7 that the age of robots would be upon us soon enough. damn you cotton...damn you and your robot enticing lies!!!!