Keepon, The Dancing Robot

Lately, I started to feel a growing interest for Design and that’s how I “discovered” Ambidextrous. I am considering getting a subscription to this magazine. So I decided to sample a few articles. This is how I came to read Keepon Dancing, a very interesting article on Keepon, a nice little robot with social interaction abilities.

Notice how simple its seems.This extremely simplistic design is engaging as shown by research conducted with children. According to the article, written by one of the two Keepon developers, Keepon is able to direct attention around a room and express simple emotions through bodily movement.

Beatbots.org, the “official” website, features a number of videos showing Keepon in action. I should admit that I have been flabbergasted by the demos. I’ve also learned from the article that Keepon starred in a Spoon Music video. See it dancing to Don’t You Evah. According to a post in BoingBoing:
the robot (...) extracts extract the pulse of rhythm from music and move its silicone body in time.

Before you reach out for your credit card, I’d like to inform you that Keepon is not commercially available. Otherwise, the compulsive buyer in me would have tried to get one and conduct some social interaction experiments in the workplace :-)