A Popular
Mechanics article offers their pick of the “top 5 robots you can buy
right now”. Oddly, none of the five are exactly what you’d expect. One
is a “Tickle Me Elmo” toy, one is an exoskeleton, two are kits (wouldn’t
those be robots you could “build right now” rather than “buy right
now”?), and one is a service offered by Autonomous Solutions
Inc, in which they will retro-fit a conventional car with
computer-controlled actuators. Are these really the coolest, most
amazing, robots that you can actually buy today? I wonder what kind of
list we could come
up with if we stuck with actual working robots (i.e., not kits or toys,
etc)? Would you pick consumer robots like the Roomba, Aibo, or
Robomower; or more expensive commercial/miltary robots like the packbot,
UAVs and UAVs?