The most advanced consumer robot yet has arrived

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 13 October 2006 04:41

Your IT - Entertainment

He, or she, if you like, includes software to add your own applications or to create a unique personality – based on yourself and your voice, or that of anyone else you can think of.

RS Media holding the remote control

Built-in speakers and a subwoofer deliver the aural experience, while there’s even as a built-in camera which works to take photos or videos. 50Mb of memory is stored within, while an SD card socket lets you add more space, and store mp3s and videos for easy playback. A USB port allows for easy connection to a PC and there are plenty more features at the RS Media website to discover!

Given that RS Media has quite advanced and programmable movement, especially with his arms, you might just be able to program him to get you a beer from the fridge, although you’d probably have to get everything set up perfectly. No doubt the ‘works every time’ beer-fetching robot is not too far away, though. Still, RS Media is versatile. He can fall on his back, but through clever motors can right himself without assistance. RS Media can also control the Roboraptor, Robopet and Roboreptile through infra-red commands, giving you a family of robots than can play together in your home, entertaining you, your guests and themselves!

Launched on Tuesday the 10th, RS Media will be exclusively available (for now) from David Jones stores in Australia, although no doubt he will be in toy stores across the globe. Comedian Mikey Robbins, Miss Universe contestant Erin McNaught and Rugby League star Braith Anasta were on hand to launch RS Media, and each had an RS Media pre-programmed with their voices and selected sentences - you can see a photo below.

Braith Anasata, Eric McNaught, name coming and Mikey Robbins

Other famous Australians to have aspects of their personality programmed into their own RS Media robot include Rove, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, David Koch and Dave Hughes. This was to demonstrate how easy it is to program your own or a different personality into the RS Media robot - you can rest easy knowing the four pre-programmed personalities loaded as standard into the robot are quite fun and aren’t celebrities!

RS Media costs AUD $799, and is the coolest, most advanced, most versatile and most customisable digital media robot ever created. While it’s set to be one of the hottest toys of the year, one can only wonder what the next version will look like, and what it’ll be able to do, no doubt launched in time for Christmas 2007!