Reeti: It's a robot, but we're not quite sure what it does yet (w/ video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Robots come in all shapes and sizes; from sets of blocks, to child sized humans, and then, there is this. At first, this reporter didn't know exactly how to classify Reeti. It isn't exactly human, but it isn't exactly a non-human. The real problem is that face, because humans tend to want to see faces as being human. The ears kind of remind me of Shrek, while the face looks surprisingly like a Snork.

The oddity of its aesthetics aside, Reeti is a robot that is designed to act as a kind of media center helper. His main goal is to act as an interface between your PC and your TV. So, if you want to watch a movie in your iTunes library, without being limited to the small screen, a bot like Reeti could help you out. Then again, so could a simple cable, and the cable won't set you back nearly as much cash. Reeti, when it goes on pre-order on an as yet undetermined date, will cost you about $7000, and that price could still go up.

Other than this, no one is exactly sure what Reeti does. Some have speculated that Reeti is, for the time being, mostly a blank platform that developers will be able to write apps for, a kind of like a robot app store, but to be honestly, this business model usually only works on devices that people already want to own for a built in feature, such as cell phones.

I will say this for the little guy (or girl?), it is packing some decent hardware. Each of the robots eyes have a HD camera, so he can see in 3D and recognize objects. It also has a speech synthesizer, that can allow it to read text back to you.

Reeti being made by Robopec, which is based in France.

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