Bouncing Red Ball

If you liked Asimo, you’ll love Plen, the skating robot. You can have this diminutive robot for ¥250,000 excluding tax. From the website (translated from Japanese):

CREATE: After you finish putting together the kit, you can freely create motions for your Plen with the supplied software. No special tools are necessary; you can assemble the kit with only a “plus” screwdriver. There is also no programming skills to create the motions. They can be created intuitively with the mouse.

CONTROL: When you finish making the motions, you can control your Plen remotely with a Bluetooth-enabled device (like AU mobile phones). You can also use your AU phones to download motions from a server. You can then send these motions to your Plen and play them instantly.

MOTION: Plen comes with over 20 motions to create a variety of expressions. Even programming beginners can immediately enjoy Plen’s varied motions after initialization. Please enjoy Plen’s motion performance by attaching the supplied roller skates kit.

Plen is powered by a 33MHz ARM7 processor, Bluetooth-enabled, connects to a USB port, stands 23cm, weighs 700 grams and can run (or skate) for 25 minutes without recharging.

This is one cool robot (see the video on the website). Unfortunately though, the Motion Editor works only for Windows XP, my AU phone is not Bluetooth capable, nor do I have ¥262,500 to spare. But Plen is cool nonetheless (even on video).

(Regarding that “plus” screwdriver above: not too long ago, I had this conversation with a friend at work: Me: “Can you get me that ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Him: “What do you mean ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Me: “‘Plus’, you know, there’s a ‘minus’ and a ‘plus’ screwdriver…” (I showed him the “plus” screwdriver.) Him: “You know, there’s no such thing as a ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ screwdriver; only the regular screwdriver and the Phillips type.” (Obviously, he was a newcomer in Japan because the Japanese call screwdrivers either ‘plus’ or ‘minus’.))

(Thanks to Nestle Poell for the link.)