The Bandit robot is a robotic personal trainer developed by students at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering. Bandit will first model exercises for you. Bandit is able to watch your movements and then mimic them, hopefully encouraging to greater effort.
(Bandit personal trainer robot video)
Bandit is used in a USC study "Robot Motivator: Towards Adaptive Health Games for Productive Long-Term Interaction". Half of the participants will have a live, in person robot; the other half will watch the robot on video.
Manga enthusiasts have seen this idea before. In the 2001 series Chobits, Sumomo is a "mobile persocom", essentially an animated laptop computer. She leads Hideki in wakeup exercises every morning and dances in standby mode.
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!' - Ray Cummings, 1931.
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.' - Neal Asher, 2008.
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'