IM-Bot

IM-Bot (or Instant Messenger Robot) is an interactive robot from the Industrial Technology Research Institute. It was displayed at the International Robot Show in Taipei in August, 2009, at the 36th International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva (2008), and at INPEX 2008. "INPEX" means "Invention & New Product Exposition". They were also shown at Innorobot 2011.

Appearance

IM-Bot is a round robot with a large pair of eyes. It has a pair of legs which remain in a sitting position and a pair of ears with three rounded tips. The robots themselves were produced in a green colorway, yellow colorway, and a red colorway.

Functions

IM-Bot was created to notify you of incoming messages from Skype and to read messages from contacts while displaying facial expressions corresponding to the emoticon in the message it reads. IM-Bot can blink, position its top eyelids on an angle, move its eyes, and move its ears up and down, and it has a light-up mouth which can change expressions. The robot can also notify you of unread messages and respond to being spoken to; if you tell it "I love you" it will respond.

Additionally, IM-Bot can be used as an airfreshner, and if you tell IM-Bot "Google search", it will open Google in your browser.

Oddly, a source for the above image mentions it being compatible with MSN Messenger, despite other sources and the image itself mentioning it being compatible with Skype.

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Trivia

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