Sharp stunned many attendees of the CEATEC tech convention recently with a gadget that has more character than all of DARPA’s terrifying robots put together. A friendly personal robot that is part Swiss Army knife, part mobile phone and all heart.

Robohon may appear to be a mere child’s toy but appearances can be deceiving, he is far more. Combine the functionality of a mobile phone with a walking talking dancing robot and you have an entirely new take on personal communications and personal robotics, a mobile phone with heart.

Robohon is a fully fledged personal robot that can stand up on its own, walk about and chatter away with you. Ask him to put on his Cameraman hat and Robohon will act as your own personal cameraman, lining up the shot and asking everyone to say cheese. Imagine a camera with legs that can move itself to get a better shot. Even automatically capturing life’s events as they go by when it detects a smile.

As your personal assistant he can read out messages and take dictation for a response, remember stuff for later and even recognize people using facial recognition. Sit him by your bed at night to put you to sleep with some music and wake you up with what’s on for the day.

Mounted inside Robohon’s forehead is a projector that can display movies and images on almost any surface. A mini projector for all occasions. On Robohon’s back is a 2 inch touch screen for the more traditional interface, though using it to type messages is probably not recommended.

Standing 19.5cm tall and weighing only 390 grams Sharp have done well to fit so much tech into the diminutive little robot. Under the hood Robohon features a quad core CPU, 3G/LTE and Wi-Fi communications.

Using Robohon as a tradition mobile phone handset is probably the only weakness of this mini high tech wonder. In phone mode he crouches and stretches his arms out as you hold him to your ear and speak into his crotch. Using the headphones and mic seems to be a far less attention getting method of making a call.

Sharp is still to set the release date and initial price, due out next year was the standard Sharp response. Though they did go on to warn that the development of Robohon is still underway and the specs will change before release. Will Apple and Android finally have some serious competition or will DARPA take over development and turn Robohon into a miniature terminators? Only time will tell but we can’t wait to see where Robohon takes us.

Reference: Robohon