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Mahru-Z Robot Maid
Mahru-Z is a walking robot maid with a rotating head containing a 3-dimensional sensor so it can figure out what work you need it to do. It can pick up your house, dump clothes into the washer and heat meals in the microwave.
It is a bipedal, humanoid robot about 4.3 feet tall; Mahru-Z weighs just 121 pounds.
(Mahru-Z robot maid)
"The most distinctive strength of Mahru-Z is its visual ability to observe objects, recognise the tasks needed to be completed, and execute them," You Bum-Jae, head of the cognitive robot centre at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, told the Korea Times."It recognises people, can turn on microwave ovens, washing machines and toasters, and also pick up sandwiches, cups and whatever else it senses as objects."
As a small child, I saw robotic maids clearly depicted in the Jetsons cartoon show. You'll probably recognize Rosie the robot maid (photo and video below).
(Rosie the robot maid from the Jetson's [circa 1960])
This excerpt from the Jetsons should give you some idea of what people expect robot maids to be able to do.
SF fans will remember this reference from Robert Heinlein's 1956 novel The Door Into Summer:
What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which.
(Read more about Heinlein's hired girl robot maid)
Compare Mahru-Z with these other household devices - the RIDC-01 robot maid and the Toyota robot maid.
From South Korean scientists develop walking robot maid.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/18/2010)
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