Sharp is working on a smartphone robot

For some, the smartphone is their best friend. Sharp takes that very literally with the RoBoHoN. The company is working on a smartphone in the form of a robot with human features. It seems that Sharp actually wants to release the smartphone robot.

“Hearing what you hear, seeing what you see, sharing the same dreams, that’s little RoBoHoN’s big dream.” With these words, Sharp introduces the robot on a website that has been created especially for the gadget.

RoBoHoN can be controlled with voice recognition; the robot also talks back and that makes it possible, according to Sharp, to enter into a natural dialogue. The two-legged robot can walk and sit and has a 2″ display with QVGA resolution of 320×240 pixels on its back. Its eyes function as a notification LED and a speaker, camera and projector are built into the head.

The twenty centimeter high smartphone robot weighs about 390 grams, is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400-soc and has connectivity via 3g, 4g or WiFi. Sharp does not disclose which operating system the robot runs on, presumably it concerns Android. According to the manufacturer, it is possible, among other things, to e-mail and call the RoBoHoN and there is a search function.

Sharp designed the robot in collaboration with Tomotaka Takahashi, a well-known designer of humanoid robots. The company seems to actually want to market the telephone robot in Japan. According to the manufacturer’s press release, that should happen in the first half of 2016. It is not yet known what the RoBoHoN will cost.