Robotis have been talking for sometime about their CycloidII follow-up, called the URIA or Ubiquitous Robotic Information Assistant - now that is a mouthful. This was originally due for release in Nov07 but we haven't had confirmation yet when it will be available to us. A picture of an early prototype is shown below.



Aweb site called DigInfo.tv (Daily Video News from Japan) have put together an interesting story on the URIA. The video can be seen at their web site or by clicking on the image below:



The following text is copied from their site: "Ubiquitous Robotic Information Assistant or URIA was developed by Korean Company ROBOTIS to help researchers by providing a robot with a wide array of capabilities and sensors in order to gather information. URIA has a USB port, LAN, VGA out and Wifi capabilities to send and receive data from its microphone, USB camera or many other sensors. URIA has an embedded PC that runs Windows XP and can display information on the LCD screen built into its chest. The many actuators in the joints of URIA use Dynamixel all in one actuators which can provide information about position, speed internal temperature and input voltage. Along with that information, there is a passive infrared sensor, an FSR and a 6 axis gyro sensor so researchers can gather a variety of information. At a height of 57 cm and weighing 5.5 kgs, URIA has good stability even on uneven terrain."

Can't wait till we get to have a play with this ....