Hasta La Gadget!

Our buddies over at Aldebaran Robotics in France, makers of the cute little Nao robot, have returned with a new elderly care robot, dubbed Romeo. The much larger humanoid stands 1.4 meters tall (a bit over four and half feet) in his gunmetal Speedo and weighs 40 kilograms (88 pounds). Romeo features 37-degrees of freedom, a four-vertebra backbone, articulated feet, a composite leg exoskeleton, and a revised actuator giving the robot safer control over its limbs. The clean-shaven bot also features a “partially soft torso” — at least until grandma unleashes her charms. The bot interacts via natural speech and gestures to perform tasks such as taking out the trash, lifting a cup with its four-fingered hand, or fetching food from the kitchen. Romeo will join a long line of robots destined to entertain and help care for the aged and infirmed when he’s unveiled in March at a cost of about €250,000 (about $330,000).

Meet Romeo, grandma’s new french robot lover originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those of us that still have a heap of holiday shopping to do and are fearfully watching the clock tick down on the the little time that is left, Amazon is gifting us a little holiday miracle: free (Yes, FREE) expedited shipping on selected products now through 11:59pm (PST) on December 22.

The offer is good for selected jewelery, cameras, photo products, video games, computers and accessories, movies, cellphones, audio and video equipment, software, and much more, including jewelery and personal care products. To check which products qualify, go to amazon.com. When you add a qualifying product to your Shopping Cart, select One-Day Shipping, and the discount will be applied at checkout. The offer only applies to products shipped within the continental U.S..

So you can stop stressing (at least a little bit) because you can order gifts today and you can get the relief that it will be here in time with one-day shipping without breaking the bank. But you still need to figure out what to get dreadful Uncle Arnold and what food to buy (that you’ll pretend like you slaved over) to take to the holiday party. Good Luck.

Believe it or not, the crew at Engadget HQ will be packing up and headed to CES 2011 a fortnight from today, and it looks as if quite a few undercover products from NEC will be making the same trip. The company has just revealed that its single-screen Cloud Communicator tablet will be on display, but moreover, a dual-screen version will be making it awfully tough for the former to get any attention whatsoever. Now, dual-screen devices aren’t exactly new, but an Android tablet with a pair of 7-inch LCDs is definitely more inciting than Kno’s education-minded megabook and the two-faced e-readers that swarmed CES 2010. Details on the hardware are few and far betwixt, with NEC only revealing that both panels will be touch-enabled, WiFi, 3G and Bluetooth modules will be baked in and that a stylus will be included for good measure. Also, it’ll fully support the use of different programs on each LCD, which — if executed properly — could melt our faces into the desert sand below. Sadly, our prying for images got us nowhere, but we’re assured to see more at next month’s extravaganza. Hang tight.

Continue reading NEC teases dual-screen Cloud Communicator Android tablet, promises more at CES

NEC teases dual-screen Cloud Communicator Android tablet, promises more at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s on, suckers. Motorola just sent us this “Tablet Evolution” teaser video for their CES 2011 announcements, and it doesn’t mince any words — it calls the iPad a “giant iPhone” and says the Samsung Galaxy Tab is running Android “for a phone” before closing out with a buzzing bee over that new red Motorola logo. That certainly suggests some Honeycomb action to us — and it fits perfectly with Andy Rubin demonstrating the next-gen version of Android on a Motorola tablet back at D: Dive Into Mobile. You know, the tablet that’s since leaked out with a Verizon logo on it. Yeah, we’re ready for this to go down — and you know we’ll be there live as it happens.

Motorola’s ‘Tablet Evolution’ video teases some Honeycomb at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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