Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a home robot capable of being controlled by, and sending video images to, a mobile phone and hopes to have the device on sale within a year.
The vacuum cleaner-size Maron-1 robot is capable of traveling around an apartment or house (it cannot climb stairs) to perform tasks such as monitoring a particular spot, like an entrance hallway, or checking on a pet. The robot can perform such tasks on demand, with the user sending commands from a cellular telephone handset and watching the video signal from Maron-1's built-in cameras, or the robot can be programmed to contact the user via telephone when an event occurs, such as when it detects movement in a hallway.
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