Keepon

Keepon is a small yellow robot designed to study social development by interacting with children. Keepon was developed by Hideki Kozima (小嶋 秀樹, Kojima Hideki^?) while at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Kyoto, Japan. Keepon has four motors, a rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose.

In the context of Kozima's "Infanoid" project, Keepon has been used to study the underlying mechanisms of social communication. Its simple appearance and behavior are intended to help children, even those with developmental disorders such as autism, to understand its attentive and emotive actions. The robot, usually under the control of a teleoperator, has interacted with children in schools and remedial centers for developmental disorders since 2003.

Keepon achieved popularity with the March 2007 YouTube release of a video in which the robot was depicted dancing to the song "I Turn My Camera On" by the band Spoon. The video was made by Marek Michalowski of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US, after programming Keepon to dance to musical rhythms. Keepon was subsequently featured in a WIRED Magazine-produced music video for Spoon's "Don't You Evah."

Keepon's awards have included the €10,000 Robots at Play Prize (Odense, Denmark, August 2007); the Best Interactive Demonstration Award at RO-MAN (Jeju, Korea, August 2007); and the First Grand Challenge in Human-Robot Interaction at ICRA (Pasadena, CA, May 2008). Keepon appeared at WIRED NextFest in September 2007 in Los Angeles, CA and September/October 2008 in Chicago, IL. Keepon was a special performer at the 2008 Webby Awards.

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Wikipedia