PAL Robotics REEM-C

The PAL Robotics REEM-C is one of the most human-like and intuitive robots we have seen that is on the market today and currently available. Although this robot is expected to have a large price tag, the option to rent it for a monthly fee is designed to make it more accessible to smaller businesses and developers looking for a solution that can mimic human movement to a reasonable degree. PAL Robotics is a company based in Barcelona, Spain and they have been producing both bipedal and wheeled robots since 2004. With 10 years in the robotics field, they have the benefit of enough knowledge and experience necessary to produce a robot that rivals just about any others in the world.

The REEM-C starts off by boasting one of the longer battery life cycles of robots available today, with 3 hours of capacity while running and 6 hours in standby. Although the REEM-C is designed to provide 4 main functions as its main selling points, there is a fifth variable that is one of the most appealing we have seen thus far: The ability to customize parts with modular components. You can choose different hands or no hands at all. You can choose the types of legs you want. You can configure your robot to operate in a way that suits you most. This interchangeable parts model will only become more sophisticated in coming years and offer seemingly unlimited possibilities as the market and demand grow.

Equipped with an onboard navigation system, the REEM-C can avoid obstacles, navigate crowded environments, localize indoor locations with maps and images and be aware of people as they approach. With an Android tablet, you can manage maps and make adjustments when necessary. In addition to this, there are a number of vision components and capabilities. The REEM-C can recognize objects and faces, detect people, see through front and back facing stereo cameras, perceive point clouds and execute visual servoing through a number of sensors, which means that the robot can use the visual sensor feedback to aid in movement and control.

Included is also a top notch human-robot interface (HRI) that can recognize speech in multiple languages, as well as recognize text and convert it to speech, which means it can read. You can control the robot remotely and manually with an Android tablet, and its telepresence and teleoperation capabilities, combined with a set of mouth LED’s to aid in expressiveness, make this robot feel like you are dealing with a living, breathing soul.

One of the most important components you will find in the REEM-C is its AI (artificial intelligence) capabilities. It is capable of learning on the fly, retaining knowledge, correcting mistakes or undesirable actions and growing in its development without the need to continuously code new protocols into it. There is also a chatbot, which allows you to carry on basic conversations with your robot. All this is accomplished with very little user input and absolutely no hardware knowledge is required.

Even with the wealth of features we see in this model, we have no doubt that it is only the beginning, and we expect to see even greater things in the years to come. With its human-like features, intuitive interface and modularity, we are happy to include the PAL Robotics REEM-C in our list of iReviews 2015 best personal robots.

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