In the United States and Great Britain in the coming weeks, the
marketing of "My Keepon", a robot that can dance. The little yellow
machine that performs despite its simple exterior, surprisingly
sophisticated movements, was originally intended to help autistic
children to practice social skills without fear, Technology Review
reported in its online edition.
Behind the product of the Japanese robotics researcher Hideki Kozima
infected by the Miyagi University. Seven years ago scientists began to
question whether a simple robot might help autistic children to
facilitate the production of social contacts. For people affected by
interactions with other people face to face are often very difficult.
But a cute-looking robot might be simple enough to attract the attention
of an autistic child up and teach him the same thing about social behavior.
My Keepon, the result of this research, initially contained
approximately 30,000-dollar technology in a modest, yellow packaging. In
individual tests found Kozima that his hypothesis may well work:
Autistic children made more eye contact with the robot than with normal
people. Behavior that they otherwise showed little relation to other
people, such as touching and fondling, was normal.
A video of the robot at a dance number had meanwhile developed into the
Internet meme. Kozima and a colleague who had worked on the algorithms
were given an offer of a British game company. A simplified version of
the original model will now soon be sold for under $ 50.
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