GOT a spare $400,000 lying around? Forget buying a house and splash out on your own robot instead.
Silicon Valley start-up Willow Garage has put its PR2 robot on general sale. The robot's two gripper-equipped arms, laser scanner and multiple cameras allow it to fold towels, fetch a beer and plug itself into the mains when it needs to recharge. But even Willow Garage concedes that the price tag will deter all but the richest customers. "This isn't pocket change," says Keenan Wyrobeck of Willow Garage. The most likely customers will be academic and corporate research labs, he says.
Tomas Lozano-Perez at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a PR2 during a beta-test giveaway programme earlier in the year. "Many research groups will wish they had one. Funding at the required level can be difficult to find, though." ...