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This is a great idea if you’ve got kids who get bored doing their homework. It’s also a great parent aide (particularly if you get asked those tricky questions like “how high is the sky?” or “when was Cleopatra born?”, or “how do you spell ‘prestidigitation’?”) As Brian has stored within his animatronic brain The Concise Encyclopedia from Britannica®, a dictionary and also a world history timeline, you should be able to ask him virtually anything and he should know.
The kids will think Brian the Brain is such a cool addition to their room and can also act as their own personal filo-fax, keeping all their important telephone numbers and dialing them on their voice command (when he’s plugged into the phone socket).
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Same old package, but brand new name. Toyota’s TPR-Robina (the artiste formerly known as DJ Robot) now plays the role as a guide, and has received an aesthetics upgrade with a more professional look. The droid has also seen Toyota engineers make improvements such as obstacle avoidance and the ability to operate autonomously. Heck, even the TPR-Robina’s fingers are agile enough to grasp writing instruments in order to hand out some autographs, although I’m not sure how much those autographed items would go for on eBay. This is no dumb machine since it features an image recognition system that reads and understands visitors’ name tags, giving specific directions accordingly. You can check out the TPR-Robina in its new role as a receptionist/guide at the Toyota Kaikan Exhibition Hall on August 27.
Now isn’t this the cutest robot you’ve ever laid your eyes upon? The Keepon doesn’t transform nor does it even come with a pair of arms - instead, it looks more like a yellow snoman with large eyes and the ability to bob according to the music being played in the background. Built by Hideki Kozima, the Keepon robot was also designed to interact with children by communicating attention and emotion courtesy of a couple of cameras and a microphone. Unfortunately, Keepon is not up for sale. It probably would have launched a frenzied rush should it be released this holiday season. I know I would line up for one!
CIO has put to pen (or should that read as put to keyboard) a list of USB gizmos that would surely be frowned upon by the stiff, upper lipped management but welcomed by ordinary office peons. 
Robots tend to be clumsy, or at least that’s the image that we get. After all, robots that are as agile as Spiderman as portrayed by numerous science fiction shows are but figments of the imagination. Even one of the most famous autonomous robots, Honda’s Asimo, has problems getting around on its own as quickly and as efficiently when compared to a normal human. The Japanese aren’t about to give up just yet though, developing a dancing robot that could eventually replace human dancers on the stage, but not quite yet. These roboticists are making large strides with their invention which is more than capable of imitating a dance routine by studying it, and will definitely guarantee you the uniformity in a team without time-consuming and costly rehearsals.
Acrobot Company Ltd is a spin-off of Imperial College London, and they have recently received $5.3 million worth of B round financing in order to help them perfect the robotic-assisted partial knee replacement surgical procedure as soon as possible. This delicate procedure will utilize a couple of Acrobot Company’s main products - the surgical planning software and its crown jewel, the robotic arm known as the Acrobot Active Constraint System. According to Acrobot, this product is vastly different from other surgical navigation systems since it provides tooling for soft tissue management while enabling a minimally invasive surgical approach.
