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For the Person Who Has Everything... A Personal Robot

Techstination feature for Friday, December 10, 1999

What do you get for the person who has everything? How about a personal robot? I'm Fred Fishkin with Bootcamp, a report on computers and technology. Imagine being able to sit back and relax when company is coming and have a robot do the vacuuming around the house. When people arrive, your robot can serve the drinks. That's the promise of a personal robot system called Cye, that's C-y-e. Henry Thorne is the CEO of Probotics, Inc.....

"It's roughly the size of a toaster oven. It's sixteen inches wide, five inches high and ten inches deep. It looks a lot better than a toaster oven but it is roughly that size, comes in many different colors I might add. And it has a center post hole into which you can attach either a vacuum...and we sell a cordless vacuum attachment...and you drop this cordless vacuum attachment into that hole, plug the connector into the port and you can then turn the vacuum on and off from your PC."

Your PC communicates wirelessly with the robot. You lay out your room on screen to teach the robot how to get around your house. Cye can't do stairs...and for serving purposes is pretty low to the ground. But there are enhancements in the works...like a camera attachment...

"After adding the camera, the next piece we're adding is an arm. And the arm will actually have a camera in the thumb and you'll be able to pick things up."

The basic Cye robot sells for under 700 dollars. You can find more information at personalrobots.com