Hanson Robotics' Zeno

This is a great year for the consumer robotics industry in the US. iRobot just introduced their new Roomba 500 series and next month Ugobe and Tomy Takara will begin shipping their Pleo and i-SOBOT robots respectively. Today, PC Mag is reporting that Hanson Robotics are about to unveil one of their first entries into the personal robotics market, a 17"-tall humanoid robot called Zeno. Part of the Robokind line of personal interactive robots, Zeno is a bipedal robot modeled like the cartoon character Astroboy. Hanson Robotics has designed the animated head which features 12 motors while the body has been designed by Robo-Garage's Tomotaka Takahashi who we interviewed recently. According to the article, the website Zenosworld will go live this week to feature videos of Zeno. Zeno will be formally unveilled in person at this year's Wired Nextfest. Stay tuned to waziwazi.com. We will be there to bring you more details on the robot, which is expected to make it to our homes in about 2 years-time.

Some interesting facts: Hanson Robotics collaborated with Korea's KAIST to create Albert Hubo's head. Zeno is also the name of David Hanson's son.