Omni Rover (2011) by Vstone, Osaka. Omni Rover is an omnidirectional mobile cart robot equipped with four Omni wheels. It's highly manoeuvrable, able to move forward, backward, left, right, diagonally, and turn on the spot. It can carry a payload of approximately 40 kg, and has a maximum speed of 1.2 m/s. Like the Mega Rover, it's equipped with an ARM microcontroller.

Mega Rover (2011) by Vstone, Osaka. Mega Rover is a two-wheel drive trolley robot with a lightweight and highly rigid aluminium frame. It can carry a payload of approximately 40 kg, and has a top speed around 40 cm/s. The ARM based control board can be programmed in the C language.

Light Rover (2021) by Vstone, Osaka. Light Rover is a low-cost learning and teaching robot equipped with a small LiDAR, powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. It also supports control by ROS, the Robot Operating System, and is designed for experimenting with different control methods for trolley robots. The two driving motors installed in the light rover have shaft encoders as standard, enabling PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) control based on wheel rotation. Combined with the LiDAR (Light Direction And Ranging), it's possible to develop SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping) based autonomous driving.

Kurumi-chan Kigurumi robot (2023), by Vstone, Osaka. Kurumi-chan is a table-top communication robot that can be customised with various animal costumes. Kigurumi (着ぐるみ) is a Japanese term for any costumed character. Four costumes are available:- rabbit, Inu (dog), bear, and Koala. "With conventional communication robots, it was difficult to significantly customize the appearance to suit the purpose, but with this product, you can change the appearance by 'changing' the costume. ... Programs for the communication robot can be created using the comprehensive development environment 'Vstone Magic', allowing for flexible development similar to existing communication robots such as 'CommU' and 'Sota'." – Release of "Kurumi-chan", a small robot whose appearance can be customized, Vstone.

Kamatte HiroChan (Niconico Version) healing communication device (2020), by Vstone, Osaka. The stuff of nightmares, "HiroChan expresses its mood by laughing and smiling in various voices just like a real baby to make people experience healing effect when petting it. HiroChan is made of same materials as a plush doll and also equipped with both acceleration sensor and speaker inside its body. Therefore, "HiroChan" changes its mood whenever it detects every shaking like hug, slapping etc. from the users. Any kind of face is possible to come to the user’s mind depending on his imagination as there is no fix design to make what "HiroChan" should be. Since the outline of "HiroChan" is made like a plush doll, the user can interact with nature and use it in various situations. The voices of "HiroChan" come from record of a real baby covering a wide range of laughing." – Vstone.

CommU Social Dialogue Robot (2016) by Vstone, Osaka. "CommU is a new type of conversational robot that can create a more advanced sense of dialogue by showing humans how multiple robots interact with each other. Equipped with cameras, microphones, speakers, network functions, etc., it is a platform that can provide a variety of robot services by highly linking with IoT devices and cloud AI. … The head has 8 axes of freedom to allow movements such as moving the eyes and opening and closing the mouth. These allow the robots to express subtle human-like behavior and emotions." – Social Dialogue Robot "CommU", Vstone.

Sota – Smart robot presenter (2015), by Vstone, Osaka. Sota is a desktop robot that can chat with you and communicate with smart devices around the house using RoboConnect, a cloud-based service for connecting robots to the Internet of Things. It can even do powerpoint presentations for you, "It can connect to your laptop and perform your PowerPoint presentations on your behalf using loving gestures, expression, sounds and body movements. Up to 5 robots can be controlled simultaneously in one presentation. By using multiple Sotas, it is possible to produce effects like a talk session. You can specify the animation of the robot by entering characters in the “notes” part of the presentation using the sota-scripting-language" – Sota – Smart robot “presenter” from Japan, by Marco.

Mint Plus (models 5200 and 5200C) by Evolution Robotics, Pasadena, CA (2011). Like the earlier Mint, the Mint Plus is designed to sweep and mop hard floors, navigating in straight lines rather than bouncing off the walls like the early Roomba. In 2012 Evolution Robotics was acquired by iRobot for $74m, then in 2013 the Mint was rebranded as the Braava.

"Looking at the Mint Plus, you can see that the front edge has more padding on it. There’s a rubber pad that runs all the way around the front. Like iRobot Roombas, the Mint robots will run into your furniture and walls. They try to slow down before they hit things, but people who use cleaning robots do tend to notice wear after using them for years." Another problem with the Mint is that the mop dries up. "The engineers at Evolution must have known this was a problem because they’ve come up with a solution: The Pro-Clean Reservoir Pad. Basically, this is a pad that’s pretty much like the regular all-purpose pad that you attach the cleaning cloths to, except that it has a container for water (and mild soap if desired) and a wick that lets the liquid in the reservoir seep out into the cleaning pad. So the mopping cloth doesn’t dry out." – The Mint Plus Does it Better - an in-depth review, Robot Vacuum Cleaner Reviews.

Mint (model 4200) by Evolution Robotics, Pasadena, CA (2010). The Mint, as seen in the top photograph, is a cleaning robot that dusts and wet-mops hard surface floors. Functional and design prototypes of the Mint are shown in the second and third photographs. The robot uses an indoor navigation system called NorthStar, with a cube that projects four infrared dots onto the ceiling, used by the robot for positioning and orientation.

"Evolution Robotics was founded to develop the first consumer grade robot operating system. The company overcame substantial technical challenges and licensed their tech to consumer electronics companies. When the 2008 financial crisis hit virtually all products in development were cancelled by the company’s partners resulting in an 80% decline in revenues. With the capital it had left they made a “bet the company” wager and decided to take the leap and design and produce their own floor cleaning robot." – Evolution Robotics Epic Success.

"Mint automatically dusts and wet mops hard surface floors using popular cleaning cloths, such as Swiffer brand Dry and Wet Cloths and other similar products. Mint's innovations are grounded in the simple goal of making an appliance-grade product that reliably cleans consumers' floors and makes their lives easier. 'Similar to how the once manual chores of washing dishes or doing laundry evolved with the invention of the dishwasher and washing machine, floor cleaning has officially been replaced by an automated appliance that achieves the same result, if not better, than previous manual methods'" – Dr. Paolo Pirjanian (CEO of Evolution Robotics), Evolution Robotics Introduces Mint: The Evolution of Floor Cleaning.

ATLAS

Company: Boston Dynamics Year: 2024

Atlas 001, Boston Dynamics, MA (2024). Boston Dynamics retired their hydraulic Atlas on April 16 2024, after 11 years of acrobatic services. The following day, they surprised the world by unveiling the new fully electric Atlas 001.

"Traditionally, we have focused on legged robots because we wanted to build robots that could balance and move dynamically—robots that could navigate unstructured, unknown, or antagonistic terrain with ease. The humanoid form factor is a useful design for robots working in a world designed for people. However, that form factor doesn’t limit our vision of how a bipedal robot can move, what tools it needs to succeed, and how it can help people accomplish more. We designed the electric version of Atlas to be stronger, more dexterous, and more agile. Atlas may resemble a human form factor, but we are equipping the robot to move in the most efficient way possible to complete a task, rather than being constrained by a human range of motion. Atlas will move in ways that exceed human capabilities." – An Electric New Era for Atlas, Boston Dynamics.

ER2 by Bandai and Evolution Robotics, Pasadena, CA (2003). The ER2 is a small, stout robot with a camera eye, earlike appendages and a video screen on its chest. It includes an innovative new technology known as visual simultaneous localisation and mapping (VSLAM) and can carry out tasks ranging from home security to reading with children. "One of our most attention-grabbing applications allowed the robot and a child to read a book together! With a child sitting cross-legged on the floor facing the robot, ER2 used its visual pattern recognition to identify the book and the current page. By tracking the child’s finger gestures, the robot was able to read sentences aloud, provide word definitions, and play fun sound effects." – ER2: Home robot, Trylonix Corporation.

ER1 Personal Robot System by Evolution Robotics, Pasadena, CA (2002). "Coupled with Robot Control Center software and your laptop, the ER1 can be taught to negotiate your home, recognize objects visually, obey voice commands, and speak using its own text-to-speech voice. The solid aluminum ER1 is available either in kit form or already assembled. If you're handy with a screwdriver, you can spend a couple of hours and save $200. All the electronics come assembled. Once you've finished building the frame, just plug in the beefy stepper motors, the rechargeable power supply, and the control box. Your laptop rests on the ER1's cushioned mounts and connects through its USB ports to the robot's camera and control box." – ER1 Robot Kit, by Jay Munro.

Evolution Robotics "makes its technologies available to the developer community through the ER1, a programmable robot kit that can be purchased on the Evolution Robotics website and at leading technology retailers. Evolution Robotics mission is to accelerate the personal robot industry and help spur the creation of a variety of highly functional personal robot products that will become indispensable in our daily lives, at home and at work." – Bandai to Create Doraemon Robots, by Christopher Macdonald, Anime News Network.

"Bug Droid" Google Android Balancing Robot, by OLogic, CA, USA (2011). "To keep OLogic going while we tried to figure out how to get AMP out the door, we spent our time picking up robotics consulting jobs. We were able to get a one-off project to build some little balancing Android robots for Google, and tour them around to events like Google IO, Google Sandbox, and Google Zeitgeist in London. Bob and I had lots of fun—it felt like a traveling circus, bringing our robots to all of these events." – Ted Larson, From HomeBrew to Hasbro How two friends hacked a balancing robot and wrote a toy story of their own.

"The Google Android Balancing Robot by OLogic turns the iconic Google Android into a two-wheeled balancing robot. It seemed fitting for him to be a balancing robot because although he has legs, he never uses them, just floats around. No Android is complete without the his own Android App, to control him. The app. allows him to be driven around, speak, play music streamed from the phone or tablet, change the color of the lighting in his head, and turn his head from side to side. He also responds to a variety of voice commands using Google Cloud services." – Google Android Balancing Robot, OLogic.

Romi conversation AI robot, Mixi, Japan (2021). "Romi is a specialized conversation robot that fits snugly in the palm of your hand. Differing from conventional robots equipped with fixed responses, Romi utilizes our cutting-edge proprietary communication AI to keep conversations going, meaning that you can speak to Romi just like a real human. We developed Romi to provide comfort like a pet and understanding like a family member. Possessing a rich range of emotional expression, Romi can share your happiness, sadness, and anger. Romi is sure to brighten your life with over 100 facial expressions and movement patterns and help you bring out the best of every day with over 100 functions such as alarms and reminders." – Providing space and opportunity for communication with Romi, Mixi.

"First, when a person speaks to Romi, Romi converts the voice data into string data via the Google Cloud Speech API. When this string data is sent to the conversation server, the server constructs the answer as text data and returns it to Romi. Finally, Romi uses text-to-speech to convert text into speech and respond to people. Romi uses generative AI in its conversation server to construct answers to people. However, the generative AI model used by Romi is "in a different direction of development'' from models such as GPT-4 … [where] hallucination becomes a major issue. On the other hand, Shinoda's managers tuned Romi based on the idea that even if there were some mistakes, 'as long as it's fun to talk about and the users laugh, that's fine.' This is one of the reasons why we used Stable LM as the base model for our original AI." – an interview with Harumi Shinoda, Vantage Studio Romi Division Development Group Manager, MIXI's conversation robot "Romi" that heals people, AI tuning that emphasizes fun over accuracy.

NeCoRo Communication Robot EPA-R01 (2001), Omron Corporation, Kyoto, Japan. The NeCoRo comes in grey and brown (Red Tabby) models both with 15 degrees of freedom, and featuring Omron's proprietary "Mind and Consciousness" technology, where "feelings are generated according to recognition feedback, … leading to cognitive decisions and actions determined by these feelings."

"Created with Omron's core sensing and control technology and artificial intelligence technology, NeCoRo realizes natural human to robot communication. Because of its ability to react to human movement and express its own emotions, people pour their affection into this robot and feel attached to it as they would a pet. By living with each other day after day, the person becomes at ease with the robot as it enriches the person's life.

NeCoRo, a robot with synthetic fur giving it a feline appearance, introduces communication in the form of playful, natural exchanges as between a person and a cat. Via internal sensors of touch, sound, sight, and orientation, human action/thoughts can be perceived, and feelings/wants are generated based on internal feelings. Using 15 actuators inside the body, it behaves in response to its feelings. It will get angry if someone is violent to it, and express satisfaction when stroked, cradled, and treated with lots of love. Based on its own physiological rhythms, it will express its desire to sleep or cuddle. Moreover, through a learning/growth function, while living with each other day after day, the cat will become attached to its owner and its personality will adjust to the owner. And as it begins to remember the sound of the owner's voice and its own name, it will recognize its name when called out by the owner." – "Is this a real cat?" A robot cat you can bond with like a real pet -- NeCoRo is born, Omron News Release.

Kimit Ragdoll (2024) by Sega Toys, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo. "KIMIT is a realistic pet robot created through extensive research on real living things. This is a new pet robot brand developed for people who are unable to raise animals but want to keep them. When you hug a KIMIT ragdoll, you can feel the faint body temperature and heartbeat. Experience the peace and security that comes from hugging. We have reproduced the carefree personality and gestures of ragdolls, which have been thoroughly researched through deep learning using AI. When you touch it or speak to it, it surprises and soothes you. Their lifelike appearance, including the texture of their fur, the movement of their eyes, and the softness of their paws, captivates the hearts of their owners. A pet robot that looks like a real thing like never before will heal you just by being by your side." – KIMIT, Sega Toys.