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Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a home robot capable of being controlled by, and sending video images to, a mobile phone and hopes to have the device on sale within a year.

The vacuum cleaner-size Maron-1 robot is capable of traveling around an apartment or house (it cannot climb stairs) to perform tasks such as monitoring a particular spot, like an entrance hallway, or checking on a pet. The robot can perform such tasks on demand, with the user sending commands from a cellular telephone handset and watching the video signal from Maron-1's built-in cameras, or the robot can be programmed to contact the user via telephone when an event occurs, such as when it detects movement in a hallway.

Fujitsu is planning to target the consumer market with Maron-1, said Takashi Uchiyama, general manager of the peripheral system laboratories at Fujitsu Laboratories, at a Tokyo event this week. The company hopes to be able to put it on sale for less than $1625 sometime within the next year.

Multitalented Robot

"The Maron-1 has three main uses," Uchiyama said. "The first is for home monitoring. Users can see what is happening in their house. The second is to control appliances, such as television sets and air conditioners, and the third is to monitor and alert the owner if anything is happening."

Maron-1 weighs around 11 pounds and measures 13 by 14 by 13 inches. Its sensors include an infrared unit for operating devices via remote control, two video cameras, and a proximity sensor. The internal nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery provides enough power for around 12 hours of use, said Uchiyama.

Remote communication with Maron-1 is via a PC Card wireless modem that uses Japan's Personal Handyphone System (PHS) packet data network. The user can control the robot via a Java applet that, at present, runs inside an NTT DoCoMo cellular handset. When you're at home with the Maron-1, a touchpad with five menu keys and a 4-inch LCD mounted in the center on the front of the robot can be used for control.

A similar home patrol robot was shown recently by Evolution Robotics. The $499 ER1 Personal Robot System comes in kit form and runs with the help of a notebook PC.

Maron-1 is the result of two years' work by the same team that created Fujitsu's Hoap-1 biped robot, according to Uchiyama. The Hoap-1, announced in September of last year, is already on sale to universities and research establishments and is being used by them as a test bed for further research into robot technologies. A number of Japanese companies showed off robots at an exhibition earlier this year.

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