Plug & Play
Smart Wheels
Words: Tom Samiljan
Evolution Robotics's ER1 Personal Robot System is the first commercially available, programmable robot that can act semi-autonomously, which means you can ask it to get you a beer, take pictures and e-mail them or recognize and recite prerecorded books by cover. Of course, such simple tasks require programming the ER1 with a series of "if/then" commands and training it to recognize your kitchen, beer bottles and book covers, among other objects. The ER1 looks strange since it consists of your laptop and a digital camera on a set of wheels, but its customizable programming possibilities are light years beyond those of Aibo or Lego Mindstorm robots.
Evolution Robotics ER1 Personal Robot System | Evolution Robotics | $599 |
