What would you like a robot to do for you? Well, an interesting trend seems to be developing - robots that allow you to decide what you’d like them to do. CellRobots can be more like toys or real, functioning robots – it all depends on your vision. You stick them together kind of like organic cells and through a mobile app, give them purpose.
“Like the cells in our bodies work together to create life and function, CellRobot has robotic parts that you can put together to create practical and functional robots,” says Anita Santa-Coloma of Beijing Keyi Technology. “You can have it race, you can create security cameras, you can create monitors, you can create transportation vehicles or maybe even a vehicle that just explores with a camera and a spotlight on it.”
Patin is robot that roams your home with some sort of purpose. Again, you decide what that purpose will be. The top is left, open, so to speak. Think of it like your mobile phone. What goes on top of it – kind of like your phone's apps. Anyone can create anything, such as a flower pot which the robot can automatically water and, of course, roam around and display from room to room.
“It could be an air cleanser, he could be just wandering around the house cleaning air,” says Naomi Dover of Flower Robotics. “It can be a coffee maker if you want coffee he’ll come find you and give you coffee, he can be anything really."
But finally, if there’s one robot here that I’m going to show you that you’re going to say, ‘I absolutely need that one’ it is the Laundroid. You take your clean clothes out of the dryer, dump it in this drawer, close the drawer, it then folds and sorts it for you.
“There will be a robot inside that’ll pick up the clothing, analyze what it is, and it’ll fold it into that category,” says Guy Hayazaki of Seven Dreamers Labs.
And while that’s due out within the next year or so, developers say they’re already working on version two with Panasonic so that’ll you stick your clothes in one machine in the beginning of the day and by evening those clothes will be washed, dried, folded and sorted.