As time goes by and people get older, it can become more difficult for people to take care of themselves and they may need assistance to do daily chores. Enter Twendy-One, a human symbiotic robot built by mechanical engineers from Waseda Univeresity in Japan. After 7 years and millions of dollars put into it’s development, The 5 foot tall, 245 pound robot is strong enough to carry a person out of bed, but gentle enough to handle toast.

The dexterity and “gentle touch” can be attributed by the 241 sensors which are located on each of Twendy-One’s hands. “Twendy-One” inherited it’s name from an early prototype called “WENDY” (Waseda Engineering Designed sYmbiont) which was developed in 1999 in Sugano Laboratory, Waseda University. Though videos of a fully functional Twendy-One can be seen on the website, it’ll be a little while before this robot is available on the market. The developers are hoping that Twendy-One will be released in the open market in the year 2015, with a price tag of around $200,000 a piece.

I personally think that the robot is somewhat reminiscent of Johnny-5 in the movie Short Circuit, however, I still think we have some ways to go before true artificial intelligence is achieved. Till then, I guess we should all save our money to buy a couple of these to do our work for us! =)

-Stephen