Google Android OS To Power ASUS "EeeBot" Robots

Submitted by eigenlance on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 7:17pm

Called EeeBots, the robots will merge the immensely popular Eee brand with the rapidly rising Google-supported operating system, Android.

The Android OS is currently making a lot of noise in the mobile devices community as Google is expected to launch (as early as this week) the first ever smartphone it designed on its own. The Google smartphone will be running on the Android OS.

Android, which Google helps develop alongside other big companies like Intel, LG, Motorola, and Samsung through the Open Handset Alliance, has been the operating system of choice for many devices lately. There are smartphones like HTC's Dream (a.ka. G1), Motorola's Droid, and Samsung's Galaxy; an Internet Tablet by Archos; an eBook reader by Barnes and Noble; and some experimental netbooks.

As for the Eee brand, it first gained prominence when ASUS introduced to the world its energy-efficient, lightweight, and Web-ready mini-notebooks, which was more popularly known as netbooks. ASUS later on diversified the brand into an all-in-one desktop computer named Eee Top and a nettop computer named Eee Box.

Its introduction into the robotics industry is the farthest the Eee brand will have gon e from netbooks, the line of products that originally carried its name.

In one of our previous news articles, we featured another upcoming robot from ASUS - the ECleaner. But while ECleaner will be designed to compete with iRobot's Roomba in the robotic

vacuum cleaner market, the EeeBot is reportedly built for educational purposes.

ASUS will develop the hardware and software for this educational robot, which is going to be part of a project sponsored by the Taiwanese government. Thus, although reported to be packed with features such as human robot interaction (HRI), positioning and navigation, as well as voice and visual technologies, these robots are expected to be affordable for families.

Kids will be able to customize and add more functionality to their robots by buying games and other applications from a software store also to be built by ASUS.

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