- Register

QRIO Country: Japan Manufacturer: Sony Year: 2003 Height: 2ft (61cm) Weight: 16lbs (7kg) Degrees of Freedom: 38 Webpage Info

Sony debuted QRIO, the apex of their SDR (Sony Dream Robot) project, in September of 2003. Its features include a wireless network, ball throwing, voice/face recognition, stereoscopic vision, obstacle avoidance, independently functional fingers, and visual mapping. Its "pinch detection" senses if a finger is caught in its joints - a major step to a robot tactile sense. QRIO has an extremely advanced sense of balance that allows it to navigate unstable terrain or stand on wobbly surfaces. If QRIO is knocked over it responds by putting its arms out to protect itself from damage, just like a human would. As of late 2004, 100 QRIO?s were in existence worldwide.

On January 6th, 2006 Sony announced that it would stop development of QRIO and will also discontinue production of the robot dog AIBO. Sony intends to further develop their technology/production methods to make QRIO commercially viable by 2009.

QRIO's slogan is "Makes life fun, makes you happy!?

QRIO was featured dancing in Beck?s Hell Yes music video. It took programmers three weeks to program their choreography. The video is available at the Beck website.

Please Login or Register to post a comment