When I first saw the movie ‘I, Robot’, the whole concept of robots mixing up with humans scared me a little. But then, it was just a movie and robots are what we want them to be. After a cluster of them that cook, wash dishes, find things, sell tickets and play music, we now have the snack-fetching ‘Snackbot’. The trio from Carnegie Mellon University professors Sara Kiesler and Jodi Forlizzi (from the HCI Institute) and Paul Rybski (from the Robotics Institute) received funds in May last year to build a social robot that sells snacks.

‘Snackbot’ whose archetype was released in July last year is expected to hit the market in mid- January. The intention behind its release is to bridge the gap between the age-old immobile and autonomous mobile robots and the contemporary social humanoid robots. The robot would tour through the University halls selling snacks and interact with people.

This might be just another robot for the technical people, but for the common person like me it sounds to be of great help. I see better humanoid robotics coming up in the future and very soon, we shall all see robots moving amongst us!

Source: designboom