Everybody loves robots, and everyone has android devices. This may have prompted Japanese multinational tech corporation Sharp to develop an adorable robot that also comes with the functionalities and features of a smartphone, the RoBoHon.
While it would seem impractical to use a robot-figured smartphone for taking calls and writing e-mals to anyone, RoBoHon's capabilities are not limited to what a mobile device can do. Think of RoBoHon as a personal assistant that can help users schedule appointments, take photographs, go on speakerphone and more.
Furthermore, RoBoHon comes with a Pico projector that anyone can use to display map locations, photographs, image slideshows, movies and a lot more. It can also act as an alarm clock that can wake its owner up and announce the schedule for the day.
According to Sharp, RoBoHon is easy to carry around. The advertisement shows that it can easily be placed on a breast pocket, a lanyard or inside a bag. It features both 3G and 4G LTE connectivity, and it is capable of notifying its owners new text messages, calls and so forth.
RoBoHon comes with a height of 19.5 cm and weighs about 390 grams. It features a 2-inch display at the back of its robotic frame, and the built-in camera sits beside the Pico projector at its face. At the back of its head sits a speaker grill as well. RoBoHon follows a black-and-white color scheme, and its design is similar to that of a toy robot.
The robot was designed by Tomotaka Takahashi, a professor from the University of Tokyo and the founder of Kyoto University's ROBO-GARAGE. The robot will be launched in the first half of next year in Japan, although there is still no word on what the official pricing is going to be and if it will see a Western release.
