The dream of having Iron Man’s Jarvis around your household is a far-fetched possibility. However, the new smartphone from Sharp, revealed during the Ceatec electronics show in Japan, is somewhat a good start towards that idea. The latest 8-inch tall RoboHon is not just a smartphone, but an intelligent cute little robot-phone to mediate your calls with expressions.
RoboHon bears a 2-inch (320X240) screen integrated on its back which serves as an interface for making calls, texting, web surfing and any other functionality that you usually perform on your handset. The rest of the device is a humanoid robot which can exhibit flexible movements and adorable gestures, while its light emitting eyes shimmer with the sound to add to its liveliness.
A camera, featuring face recognition, is attached to its forehead and readily shoots you when you give it a command. Furthermore, a built-in projector located on its head can visualize your gallery on any surface and in any orientation. You can take it anywhere, but its shape and 390 grams make it unsuitable as a substitute for advanced touchscreen phones like Google’s Nexus 6P.
Today robots are participating in dance competitions, doing our simple kitchen tasks, cleaning jobs, automating manufacture processes and exploring other planets where a man cannot survive. A far more advanced picture of RoboHon could be sought in Robbin William’s Bicentennial Man, a self-sufficient robot capable doing man’s work and more… even feel and display emotions on its own without any programming.
The featured video demonstrates some of the most impressive features of the smartphone robot; however, the practical smartphone robot is not as much flourishing in terms of intuition. For those interested in buying RoboHon might have to wait a while because the product will be first launched in Japan in the first half of 2016 and its distribution elsewhere will take more time.
