Korean phones have always been about a generation or so ahead of the rest of the world's but their latest innovation takes them into the next century. Beginning in a few months' time, 1,000 robots will be cleaning up people's homes, taking care of pets and reading books to children - and half of them will be controlled by mobile phone.


According to The Korea times:

"The cell-phone-directed robots can guard homes around the clock as camera-eyed models enable their owners to monitor their home at any time from anywhere.

In addition, the URC robots will clean rooms, read books for kids and take care of pets left alone at home."

The robots themselves are dumb, containing only enough processing power to get them to move. All the brainpower required to get the robots to adapt to their environment is provided by some serious computational horsepower on servers. The robots capture data from their environment, transmit it to the servers over WLAN, and the results are transmitted back to the robots instructing them on where to move and when.

Apparently the Korean Government is aiming for every person in Korea to have one of these beauties by 2020.

No idea what these beauties look like, but if you want an example of how impressive the latest robots have become, check out the video below of a skateboarding robot. Asimov's robot vision is only 15 years away, it would seem (at least if you're Korean!)

[Source: Korea Times]