Electrophotonic Timesinks

Sony might be a bitch of a company at times, designing their own proprietary standards as soon as they get a chance and filling everything with DRM. On the other hand, they never seem afraid of innovating, and seem (or, well, at least seemed) eager to pour money into crazy new ideas.

I’ve seen this little gadget in the window of the Sony Store in Stockholm, but it was always powered down and I had no idea what it did.

Amazing how expressive a gizmo like that can be, even though it doesn’t have a face and is limited to just a few degrees of freedom. I guess that says something about how easy we humans anthropomorphize things. At least this particular robot is about as far from the uncanny valley you can get.

Of course it has no practical use and at $399 is just an expensive toy. According to Wikipedia, production has been discontinued. Too bad Sony’s amazing QRIO humanoid robot met the same fate, even long before the economic crisis.